HEIW improving quality of care across Wales through simulation
Published 20 November 2025
Simulation is a learning tool that supports development through experiential learning by creating or replicating a particular set of conditions which resemble real life situations. It should provide a safe environment where participants can learn from their mistakes without any danger to patients, allowing individuals to analyse and respond to these realistic situations, with the aim of developing or enhancing their knowledge, skills, behaviours and attitudes. (Hawker et al. 2022)
HEIW is aspiring to contribute meaningfully to shape and strengthen simulation practice across Wales, leading the development of a highly trained health and care workforce able to deliver high quality, safe and sustainable care across Wales.
HEIW’s Simulation Team works alongside the health and care workforce in Wales to support the delivery of high quality, equitably accessible and interprofessional simulation, while promoting collaboration and shared learning.
Improving quality through simulation framework
Simulation has been used in health and care for many years with its breadth of applicability evolving over time including for training, education, quality improvement, innovation and research amongst other areas. This document was developed to address the need for an easy-to-use framework on how to develop a simulation-based response for improvement following key events in healthcare based on Quality Improvement (QI) principles.
The framework provides a step-by-step guide to the design of simulation-based interventions to improve patient safety, including planning for who needs to be involved, what needs to be done, how simulation will contribute and how learning should be shared. This work was led by HEIW’s multi-professional experts both in simulation and QI, in collaboration with the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH), the Society for Simulation in Europe (SESAM) and Improvement Cymru. This led to the gathering of national and international perspectives which contributed to the framework.
The framework aims to be useful to anybody in the health and care community that wishes to be involved in developing a simulation response following an event or, more widely, in improvement using simulation.
Faculty Development Programme
The Simulation Faculty Development Programme was developed following extensive consultation with the health and care simulation community across Wales. The programme aims to provide standardised training that aligns with the national ASPiH simulation standards, supporting simulation practitioners to deliver consistent, high quality simulation activities. The programme uses a blended approach of synchronous and asynchronous, online and face-to-face learning to ensure flexibility and accessibility to the programme.
The programme comprises three tiers; Essential, Advanced and Expert. The first Essential Faculty Development Course was launched in October 2022 and since its inception, 227 healthcare staff have been trained. The pilot Advanced Faculty Development Course has recently been completed and is due for launch in Spring 2026. The ‘Expert’ tier is the final tier to be developed and will be commenced in due course.
Improving accessibility to simulation resources
The Simulation Team has created a range of bilingual (Welsh and English) online resources to support and quality assure simulation-based activities and practice. These resources have been developed and shaped by contributions from simulation colleagues across Wales and beyond. They include a scenario writing template, a structured debriefing approach, recorded webinars, and materials from the annual simulation conference. An online repository is also available for sharing simulation scenarios from across Wales, which the team hopes will grow over time.
Quote from Sara-Catrin Cook, Associate Dean for Simulation and Clinical Skills (and Project Lead): “We at HEIW’s Simulation Team are very proud to be able to support our colleagues with the excellent work underway across Wales to widen access to resources that support high-quality interprofessional healthcare simulations, through a collegiate and collaborative approach.”
For further information please contact: 📧 HEIW.Simulation@wales.nhs.uk