This week on Curious Now, we’re joined by an expert in the exploration phase of debriefing to help us better understand the “listen and explore” region of PAAIL. Bridget Van Gotten is a Learning and Design Strategist for the Zamierowski Institute for Experiential Learning at Kansas University Medical Center, and a 2015 alum of the CMS Healthcare Simulation Essentials: Design & Debriefing course.
The KUMC team designed a new approach to exploration when they found that in simulation, learners were simply agreeing with the debriefer’s point of view rather than trying to contrast it with their own thoughts, especially when they were doing the right thing (i.e. “I did the correct thing because that’s the correct thing to do.”) A second major discovery was that learners at all experience levels were describing the same barriers to success, rather than having different needs at different levels. For example, both med students and attendings might describe the busyness of the code space as making it difficult to claim a leadership role during the case, often using the exact same words.
Bridget coaches Jenny on how to conduct better explorations of learner thinking, in this case in a faculty development conversation about classroom management and maintaining the attention of learners.
Download the debriefing guide here: 2025.11.11_ZIEL_Debrief Guide_v14_for Podcast