SAFILT Tools and Resources: Good Practices in Facilitation - dos and don'ts

Remember it is not what you say but how you say it. Remain honest in your feedback without appearing judgemental.
Reinforce that it is not about individuals in the scenarios, it is about junior doctors who are learning their trade or established practitioners examining their reactions, habits, and problem solving.
Be inclusive. There will be some in the group who are quiet but will have significant things to add. Try to support them in adding to the discussion.
Use video to show where good practice has been evident.
Video can also be used as an exemplar of real work – ‘This isn’t about you, this is about what happens every day in practice. Can anybody think of any similar situations they have seen?’
Reinforce that simulation is not about assessment of competence; it is about confronting difficult situations where decisions need to be made under significant levels of stress and the ways that this can affect performance and help improve it.
Vary your introduction to each debrief. Try and prevent it from being overly formulaic. For instance in 1 debrief you may start with ‘So describe what happened in there’. In another you might start with ‘So tell me how you felt about that; how did it go’?
Be mindful of learning objectives to be achieved for the scenario. It is more than identifying one or two notable moments to be debriefed or focused on.
Keep up to date with policies and procedures so that you can give accurate and current information

Don’t

Set people up to answer an unanswerable question.
Use video to catch people out in relation to their perceptions of their practice or to prove a point.
Use the debrief as a mechanism to tell people what to do in a given situation. Advising at appropriate times in the discussion is always good; presiding over a seminar is not.
Spend the whole debrief talking to one or two individuals. Others will become bored and disaffected.
Try to give information if you are not sure about it. It is better to say you don’t know or that you will try to find out later in the day.
Finish the debrief on a negative note. Summarise positively with areas for further development where necessary.
Be too overt about your plan for the debrief; this will constrain discussion and feel formulaic. Try to underpin the discussion with these constructs without them becoming constraining and limiting factors to learning and discussion.
Try to cover all the learning objectives in one debrief if not feasible. Prioritise, safe in the knowledge that subsequent simulations will allow you to cover the remaining learning objectives