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Introduction: Experiential learning, followed by debriefing, is<br />at the heart of Simulation-Based Medical Education (SBME) and<br />has been proven effective to help master several medical skills.<br />We investigated the impact of an educational intervention, based<br />on high-fidelity SBME, on the debriefing competence of novice<br />simulation instructors.<br />Methods: This is a prospective, randomized, quasi-experimental,<br />pre- and post-test study. Sixty physicians without prior formal<br />debriefing expertise attended a 5-day SBME seminar targeted on<br />debriefing. Prior to the start of the seminar, 15 randomly chosen<br />participants had to debrief a spaghetti and tape team exercise.<br />Thereafter, the members of each team assessed their debriefer’s<br />performance using the Debriefing Assessment for Simulation in<br />Healthcare (DASH)© score. The debriefing seminar that followed<br />(intervention) consisted of 5 days of teaching that included theoretical<br />and simulation training. Each scenario was followed by a Debriefing<br />of the Debriefing (DOD) session conducted by the expert instructor.<br />At the end of the course, 15 randomly chosen debriefers had to<br />debrief a second tower building exercise and were re-evaluated with<br />the DASH score by their respective team members. The Wilcoxon<br />signed-rank test was used to compare pre- and post-test scores.<br />Statistical tests were performed using GraphPad Prism 6.0c for Mac.<br />Results: A significant improvement in all items of the DASH score<br />was noted following the seminar. The debriefers significantly improved<br />their performance with regard to “maintaining an engaging learning<br />environment” (Median [IQR]) (4[3-5] after the pre-test vs. 5.5[5-6]<br />after the post-test, P<0.001); “structuring the debriefing in an organized<br />way” (5[4-5] after the pre-test vs. 5[5-6] after the post-test, p=0.002);<br />“provoking engaging discussion” (4[3-5.75] after the pre-test vs. 6[5-6]<br />after the post-test, P<0.001); “identifying and exploring performance<br />gaps” (5[4-6] after the pre-test vs. 6[5-6] after the post-test, P=0.014);<br />and “helping trainees to achieve and sustain good future performance”<br />(4[3-5] after the pre-test vs. 6[5-6] after the post-test, P<0.001).<br />Conclusion: A simulation-based debriefing course, based mainly<br />on DOD sessions, allowed novice simulation instructors to improve<br />their overall debriefing skills including, more specifically, the ability<br />to foster engagement in discussions and maintain an engaging<br />learning environment.