History of the Healthcare Simulation Standards

The INACSL Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice are living documents that communicate the best practices on how to design, conduct, and evaluate simulation activities. The need for best practices standards for simulation began as a round table discussion by the INACSL Board of Directors (BOD) in 2009 (Decker, 2009). With the endorsement of the organization, the BOD began identifying and developing standards for best simulation practice based on their knowledge, expertise, literature reviews, and input from INACSL members. A template was developed to standardize the format during development and inclusion in the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation (Leighton, 2010).

The first seven INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation were presented at the 9^th Annual INACSL Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2010. INACSL members were surveyed for feedback and changes were made based on their input. A second draft of the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation were presented at the next INACSL conference in 2011. Again, members provided feedback and volunteered to assist the BOD. This resulted in the creation of a task force that consisted of BOD and INACSL members to revise the final standard documents for publication (Sando, Faragher, Boese, & Decker, 2011).

In 2011, the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation were published in the Clinical Simulation in Nursing journal. The INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation continued to evolve based on current literature, best practices, and feedback from members and external reviewers. In 2013, the second edition of the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation was published.

In 2014, twenty healthcare organizations were invited to review and provide feedback on the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation. Sixteen of those organizations reviewed and provided feedback.

In 2015, two additional areas of expertise were added to the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation, Simulation Enhanced Interprofessional Education (Sim-IPE) and Simulation Design. INACSL published the third edition of the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation in 2017.

In 2021, INACSL re-released the INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation℠ as the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice™ to reflect better positioning within the field of simulation. Two additional areas of expertise were added: Prebriefing and Professional Development.