Bug Busters: Who you gonna call? Professional development for healthcare simulation technology specialists

SimGHOSTS introduced Bug Busters to train healthcare simulation technology specialists (HSTSs) as a way to showcase experienced HSTSs’ approaches to technology troubleshooting. This competition functions as a collaborative exchange of technology and operational solutions. It has been stated that Bug Busters is an equivalent to SimWars but for technology specialists. The competition starts with groups of individuals that function in the role of HSTSs. They are given a set of tasks that need to be completed within 10 min prior to a pending simulation scenario. The simulation room is designed with planned technical glitches, equipment that is defective, or inappropriate setup. There are multiple rounds of competition at a group level. In the final round, individual HSTSs from the advancing group complete challenges to win the competition. The number of correct tasks completed is used as the primary score determinant with time being the tie breaker. During each round, a set of distractors is introduced for a time bonus, asking technical or simulation-based questions that might be encountered in daily work. The competition demonstrates the need for HSTSs and provides an innovative way to acknowledge the complexity of their work and assess their skills. To ensure that the field of simulation continues to expand, training opportunities must be provided for all those involved in simulation. Bug Busters is one way to train and encourage “out of the box” thinking for HSTSs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s41077-019-0105-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.