Effectiveness of medical simulation in teaching medical students critical care medicineTY - Oral presentation AU - Matt Beal AU - John Kinnear AU - Caroline Rachael Anderson AU - Thomas D Martin AU - Rachel Wamboldt and Lee Hooper A2 - T1 - Effectiveness of medical simulation in teaching medical students critical care medicine Y1 - 2017-01-19 PY - JF - M3 - doi: 10.1102/2051-7726.2017.A005 SP - 5 EP - 5 UR - VL - 4 AB - Simulation has been shown to be a highly effective teaching method in a number of health professional groups, but its effectiveness in medical school education is less well defined with studies showing positive, negative and equivocal effects. Cognitive load theory may go some way to explain why a learner’s baseline knowledge can impact the efficacy of simulation. Where a learning task is too complex, short term memory can become overloaded resulting in the inhibition of learning. We present the results of a systematic review examining the effectiveness of simulation in teaching medical students critical care medicine. We searched AMED, EMBASE, Medline, ERIC, BEI and AEI as well as the bibliographies and citations of included papers to July 2013. We included randomised control trials which compared simulation to another intervention or to no teaching, for the purposes of teaching medical students critical care medicine. Reviewers conducted maximal data extraction on participants, methods, outcomes and results; as well as assessing study quality. Results were synthesised using a random effects meta-analysis. We identified 22 eligible studies (n=1325). Fifteen studies were included in the meta-analysis and found simulation to be significantly more effective than other teaching methods (SMD 0.84, 95% CI 0.43 to 1.24; p<0.001; I-squared  89%). High fidelity simulation was more effective than low fidelity simulation, and simulation was found to improve skill acquisition (SMD 1.01, 95% CI 0.49 to 1.53) but was no better th