Jane Lindsay Miller is the founding Director of the AHC Simulation Center & IERC, an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, and a Graduate Faculty member in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota where she has worked since 2002. She began her career as a medical anthropologist, studying the impact of culture on patient perceptions of risk in contracting and transmitting HIV. She completed a PhD in Higher Education in 1998. She serves on multiple committees and advisory boards for the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education. She consults and publishes regularly on simulation in healthcare education and practice, particularly as it relates to performance-based assessment, concepts of professional identity, and the acquisition of interprofessional team skills. She is currently the principal investigator on a research grant from the Association of Standardized Patient Educators (ASPE) to develop and assess collaborative practice simulations. Dr. Miller is also the recipient of the ASPE Educator of the Year award for 2014.
Over the past decade, simulation has become an important part of health science education, at every stage of professional development and experience. Simulation offers learners the opportunity 1. to practice common skills to proficiency; 2. to experience less-common scenarios before they see them in actual clinical practice; and 3. to experiment with and test novel approaches to difficult challenges. This is no less true for learners in interprofessional education and collaborative practice.