Double Stimulation in Healthcare Emergencies: Fostering Expansive, Collective Tool Use through Simulation-Based Continuing Professional Education

This paper explains how simulation-based continuing professional education can enable professionals to overcome significant challenges in healthcare practice. It focuses on pedagogies that address conflicts of motives experienced by teams at work by promoting collective use of protocols and an auxiliary motive to collaborate in agile, relational practices. Data relating to a simulation programme (PROBE) associated with reduced injuries in emergency birth situations are examined. The concept of double stimulation informs analysis of simulated scenarios and linked debriefs. PROBE transforms a commonly used protocol from a memory tool used by individuals to an 'in-between' tool used expansively and collectively across the birthing team. Crucial to this are diverse epistemic levels of mediation that enable teams to resolve conflicted, high-stakes situations through fluid, responsive interactions. Indications in the data that PROBE pedagogies foster transformative agency among health professionals are highlighted and discussed. The paper thus adds to understanding of how double stimulation as a principle of volitional action can be put to work in continuing professional education.