CMS | Center for Medical Simulation

08/25/2025

Did you miss an episode of Curious Now with Jenny Rudolph and can't find the time to catch up? Now you can find every Workout of the Week in one place!

Want to catch up to Curious Now? On this page, you can find every Curious Now "Workout of the Week" since Episode 1. Listen above, or follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube!

08/22/2025

This week on Curious Now, bring home the heart of this summer's work on internal resets, thought bystanding, communication, and teamwork. Our workout of the week is a simple one: go from mental rehearsal to actual practice.

In previous weeks we asked ourselves, and this week ask the group:
• “Who sees this differently?”
• “What am I not noticing?”

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

08/20/2025

This week on Ask CMS: a reader of our previous columns wants post-COVID research on how to handle high learner numbers in their simulation lab. Read more:

Q: I read your recent column on observers in simulation, and I was surprised to see that the most recent research cited was from 2016. I have a similar issue with having more students than can reasonably care for the patient, but our issues are due to how our lab scheduling and enrollment have chang...

08/08/2025

On this week’s Curious Now Listeners, Jenny, Laura Rock, and Janice Palaganas each share a recent time that they’ve struggled to be transparent with their own thinking as they rejoin us to discuss their experience with last week’s workout of sharing one vulnerable point of view in a conversation to try to work towards a collaborative inquiry rather than mystery and defensiveness.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

Science Podcast · Updated Biweekly · A nurse preceptor has just watched a trainee commit a serious error despite hours of lecture, reading, and hands on training. In spite of herself, she starts to heat up, much like the more severe clin…

08/01/2025

The Greatest Obstacle to Effective Learning Conversations | Curious Now #12:

In decades of faculty and clinician training at the Center for Medical Simulation, we’ve identified one element of our approach to Good Judgment learning conversations that people have the most difficulty with. This obstacle can take what should be an insightful, curious inquiry and leave it with a defensive or confused learner. Similar effects happen in negotiations at point of care and feedback conversations. The greatest obstacle is this: clearly and transparently sharing what you think about the situation. There are many reasons why we struggle with this, from thinking that if we share what we believe, it will be too harsh or too threatening for the other person, to believing that sharing our point of view will be used against us and that it would be safer to try to unilaterally steer the discussion without it. In this week’s workout, you’ll be challenged to try sharing your underlying point of view in a situation where that feels vulnerable to you.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

07/25/2025

Janice Palaganas and Laura Rock join us for our first Listeners episode of this new chapter! This week we are discussing how the mental rehearsal of asking “What am I missing?” worked out for them in situations where they were very sure that they were right.

Emerging again is a theme where our listeners find that they experience the work of checking their emotions and getting curious very different in professional settings where they are working in a certain mode versus how they conduct themselves in ‘default mode’ in their personal life.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

07/22/2025

This week on Ask CMS: A recent attendee of our workshop on Teaching, Coaching, and Debriefing across the SimZones at SESAM has a question about a specific problem they encountered in training a team leader during a rapid response case:

Q: I recently attended one of your workshops at SESAM on “Teaching, Coaching, or Debriefing with Good Judgment” and found it helpful. However, we didn’t have time to work through a situation I had trouble with: a while back I was running a simulation in which the learners were in the role of t...

07/18/2025

Join us for our third chapter of Curious Now, as we talk about words and mindsets that can transform toxic culture. Our guests this chapter will be Dr. Laura Rock and Dr. Janice Palaganas, former host of our DJ Simulationistas and SimFails podcasts!

Becoming skeptical of your own thoughts and beliefs, bystanding your own perception of events so that you can ask with curiosity: “What am I missing here?” We’re setting the stage for our third chapter of Curious Now, looking at how we can skillfully lead teams and scale up our good judgment approach to not just ourselves but the people around us.

We’ve talked previously about becoming aware of our own reactive judgments and perceiving them as thoughts rather than reality. But what we mean here is a more challenging exercise: can we bystand not just what we might call ‘System 1’ thoughts, which are easy to understand as hot or instinctive reactions, but also our ‘System 2’ thoughts which are cooler, more considered and, at least to us, rational?

• Get coaching from Jenny Rudolph at www.harvardmedsim.org

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

07/11/2025

BJ So and Mel Barlow join us for the final time! Trying to explain actions we saw that didn’t make sense in the moment. BJ shares the story of a near miss in a complex case, and how he tried to understand his junior doctor’s actions.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

07/08/2025

This week on : A pharmacology prof wants to incorporate more sim, but the lab is completely booked. How can we do more sim without leaving the classroom?

https://harvardmedsim.org/blog/ask-cms-7-no-time-available-in-the-sim-lab/

07/03/2025

In this week’s Curious Now, we’re introducing the idea of ‘Frames, Actions, Results’, an action science framework that CMS has used for many years to help advanced clinical and debriefing practitioners overcome the internal obstacles that are keeping them from being able to reach their goals. Here, we want to apply the framework to other people’s actions—what could the person’s frame have been that, when we view their action through that frame, the totally strange or confounding thing they did is, in fact, a little act of genius?

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

06/27/2025

Congrats Laura Rock! Amazing to see this work on the big stage at