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When FMHS Focus catches up with Dr. Errol Stern (BSc’78, MDCM’82), the emergency room physician steers the conversation away from himself and towards one of his passions: simulation in medical education. 

"My early professional life is not as exciting as the last dozen years in simulation education," he deadpans.  

Stern is the chairperson of the simulation education program at the Department of Emergency Medicine at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ, as well as the director of the Emergency Medicine Simulation Centre at the Jewish General Hospital (JGH). 

He and wife Rhona Weis-Stern (BScPT’84) (pictured together above with VP-Dean Lesley Fellows) have recently been honoured with a conference room in their names at McGill, at the Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning (SCSIL), where they have created an endowment towards educational initiatives in emergency medicine.  

At the ribbon cutting for the Rhona and Dr. Errol Stern Conference Room.

Errol, who is an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and an attending in the Emergency Department of the JGH, remembers well a time before medical simulation training.  

Back in the day, he and his peers were expected to learn how to start a central line (i.e., insert a tube into a large vein) using anatomical landmarks on actual patients, albeit under close supervision. Today, this procedure is taught in a simulated environment with ultrasound guidance. "Trainees now acquire procedural knowledge and technical skills on simulation task trainers before performing a supervised line insertion on a live patient."

Simulation training helps learners – whether students, residents or seasoned professionals – gain confidence. It provides practical experience working in a safe environment in which mistakes are welcomed rather than feared. "We don't look at them as mistakes but rather as opportunities to teach," Errol says.

Does the risk-free environment produce a stress-free arena for learners? "No," he says. "Immersed and engaged participants actually do feel the stress of the situation." In the case of emergency medicine, participants are working in a simulated resuscitation room with a life-like manikin who breathes and has pulses. When the manikin "subsequently deteriorates," the multidisciplinary team then needs to work together "to share their thoughts, determine the cause, and collaborate with therapeutic action, using external resources when applicable."

The effect can be engrossing: "Participants tend to forget it is a simulation, often wanting to continue their management as the overhead speaker announces the end of the simulated scenario."  

Errol, who was named to the Honour List for Educational Excellence by the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences in 2024, is grateful for the opportunities medical simulation presents for learning and teaching. He has enjoyed fostering a team of trained simulation educators at the JGH. He encourages residents in emergency medicine to take real-life situations from their work in the hospital and convert these "clinical cases seen" into educational material. It is important to him to nurture a "peer-to-peer learning environment," where learners are equipped with the skills to lead their own post-simulation debriefs with minimal assistance.

According to Errol, simulated scenarios prepare participants for common emergency presentations as well as to recognize rare diseases with life-threatening symptoms, which call for what are known as HALO procedures, with HALO standing for "High Acuity, Low Occurrence."

This is not the first gift from Rhona and Errol Stern in support of simulation education in Montreal. The couple have also sponsored a simulation room in their name at the JGH. Both McGill and the JGH hold an important place in the history of the couple. Rhona, a graduate of the McGill School of Physical & Occupational Therapy (SPOT), worked and supervised McGill physiotherapy students at the JGH physiotherapy department for 36 years, as well as facilitating on a number of occasions the SCSIL Interprofessional Education (IPE) course, while Errol obtained a BSc in physiology prior to receiving his MDCM, working at the JGH emergency department since 1986.  

The couple met at the JGH. "I was her patient with a torticollis (wry neck)," says Errol, adding that the couple, who married in 1988, have two children, Brandon (BScArch’13, MArch’14) and Greg (BSc’16, MSc(A)PT), who are also McGillians, with Greg following in Rhona’s footsteps at SPOT.  

Associate Dean of Education Technology & Innovation Dr. Gerald Fried (BSc’71, MDCM’75), who is director of the SCSIL, says the couple’s endowment will be used to set up and research new technologies, as well as to welcome McGill experts from other centres who are familiar with those technologies, "all in an effort to continually improve the way we train emergency physicians."

The SCSIL counts 27 full-time staff, with its facilities occupying 31,000 square feet. It hosts over 500 workshops a year and has a pool of 200 actors to play what are referred to as "standardized patients." 

While the donation will primarily benefit emergency medicine, Fried says there are many disciplines that emergency medicine cross-fertilizes. "It will benefit people beyond this one area of practice."

Fried commends the Sterns for bolstering what Errol has already given to McGill and the Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning in time and effort, enthusiasm and expertise. "It's really wonderful when you can align your philanthropy with your passion."