With over 7 million people dying from stroke annually, Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability with rapid responses crucial to achieving effective treatment outcomes. Simulation education has been shown to improve timely decision-making related to reperfusion treatments, stroke pathways, organizational aspects of multidisciplinary stroke management and clinical outcomes. Simulation is well established as an educational modality to improve clinical performance and in a study by Ajmi and colleagues, the introduction of stroke simulation training was associated with an improvement in both mortality and morbidity. An effective stroke response involved interdisciplinary collaboration, while especially team communication and an effective cooperation is essential. These are key learning objectives of simulation training, enabling acute stroke care teams to improve their communicational skills and cooperation.

The target audience of our workshop come from multiple disciplines (neurologist, stroke physician, neuro-interventionalist, nurse, etc.), enabling multidisciplinary and harmonization of treatment paradigms. Participants will be enabled to set up their own simulation program and train local acute stroke care teams in order improve stroke care at their institution, region or country.

Our program is designed to provide attendees with advanced skills in the pedagogy of simulation to improve educational experiences for their home institutions. Participants will be clinicians working in acute stroke care and will therefore be well placed to take the program learnings back to their local teams. By training trainers, rather than training participants, the program contributes to the potential development of local simulation faculties and sustainability of local educational opportunities. It is anticipated that the flow on effect will be improved care delivery and clinical outcomes for patients with stroke.