Making the invisible visible: a place for utilizing activity theory within in situ simulation to drive healthcare organizational development?

BACKGROUND: The healthcare needs of our societies are continual changing and evolving. In order to meet these needs, healthcare provision has to be dynamic and reactive to provide the highest standards of safe care. Therefore, there is a continual need to generate new evidence and implement it within healthcare contexts. In recent times, in situ simulation has proven to have been an important educational modality to accelerate individuals’ and teams’ skills and adaptability to deliver care in local contexts. However, due to the increasing complexity of healthcare, including in community settings, an expanded theoretical informed view of in situ simulation is needed as a form of education that can drive organizational as well as individual learning. MAIN BODY: Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) provides us with analytical tools to recognize and analyse complex health care systems. Making visible the key elements of an in situ simulation process and their interconnections, CHAT facilitates development of a system-level view of needs of change. CONCLUSION: In this paper, we theorize how CHAT could help guide in situ simulation processes—to generate greater insights beyond the specific simulation context and bring about meaningful transformation of an organizational activity.