Psychological Safety

Providing the learner with a psychologically safe environment is a key component of the prebrief and continues through the enactment and the debrief.

Psychological safety may be defined as, “a feeling (explicit or implicit) within a simulation-based activity that participants are comfortable participating, speaking up, sharing thoughts, and asking for help as needed without concern for retribution or embarrassment” (Lioce et al., 2020, p. 38).

When the virtual simulation is a facilitated experience, the educator can detect psychological safety concerns early in the experience. When the simulation is completed asynchronously, the impact of psychological safety may only be visible to educators during the debrief. Either way it is played, the learners’ feelings of being safe have an impact on how comfortable they are to make decisions and initiate actions during the simulation. Safety is threatened if learners feel they are going to be judged or might experience negative consequences as a result of their choices or if the content is of a sensitive nature. The goal is not to completely eliminate feelings of intrapersonal safety, but rather to create a setting where the learners feel safe enough to embrace being uncomfortable.

A sense of psychological safety will result in a more free exchange of information during the enactment of the simulation and debrief. Learners are more likely to surface and discuss privately held information rather than just discussing information that is common to all. It is important to create a safe environment throughout the virtual simulation and this process starts with the prebrief.

Spotlight on Scholarship: Prebriefing

The following scholarly paper describes the process of setting up a psychologically safe learning environment during prebriefing:

Turner, S., & Harder, N. (2018, May). Psychological safe environment: A concept analysis. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 18, 47-55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2018.02.004.