Introduction

Trauma among pregnant women occurs during 1 in 12 pregnancies1 and pregnant trauma patients are twice as likely to die or suffer significant morbidity compared with their non-pregnant counterparts.2 Management of traumatic injuries in the obstetric patient requires a multidisciplinary approach for rapid assessment, treatment and transport to optimise maternal and fetal outcomes. Multidisciplinary team training using simulation for obstetric emergencies can improve clinical skills, teamwork and patient safety.3 Simulation training can also enhance communication among providers that can further increase the efficiency of the emergency response.4 According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on patient safety and quality improvement, simulation training can identify and correct common clinical errors made during emergencies, as well as allow team members to practice effective communication in a crisis.5

Medical simulation is widely utilised in the obstetric and surgical residency curricula at our institution. Additionally, our nursing onboarding involves a significant amount of simulation, as does the ongoing education of the other allied health professions. However, we recognised that our training was occurring in educational silos and sought to improve teamwork, role clarity and the use of protocols among multidisciplinary team members who respond to traumatically injured pregnant patients. We conducted an in situ simulation and debriefing to train our multidisciplinary team on the unique emergency care needs of pregnant trauma patients and to identify latent safety threats (LSTs). We also used the simulation to clarify and evaluate …