Assistant Director, Clinical Simulation & Resuscitation Quality

About the role

The Assistant Director, Clinical Simulation & Resuscitation Quality supports operations of the simulation lab to ensure effective delivery of center programming with a focus on quality assurance. This role may provide direct supervision to professionals at the and serves as an advisor to Center leadership to set goals.

Responsibilities

• Co-design clinical scenarios alongside hospital clinical educators, residency program directors, and academic faculty to target specific learning gaps.
• Actively incorporate clinical priority quality and safety concepts directly into simulation scenarios leveraging existing system committees, experts, and data trends.
• Enable and coordinate interprofessional simulation initiatives to enhance communication and clinical teamwork.
• Maintain the master scenario library, ensuring clinical accuracy, up-to-date guidelines, and standard formats.
• Cultivate a culture of learning and psychological safety for all staff and learners that engage with the Simulation Center.
• Establish and manage a system-wide mock code program, including governance, scheduling cadence, performance feedback mechanisms, and standardized scenario design for cardiac, respiratory, and other high-acuity emergency events.
• Tailor mock code scenarios and equipment/medication protocols to the distinct needs of inpatient, ambulatory, adult, and pediatric care settings, ensuring age- and acuity-appropriate realism.
• Cookordinate with unit-based champions, nursing leadership, and rapid response/code teams to schedule unannounced and announced mock codes across care sites.
• Lead structured debriefs after each mock code and ensure timely feedback loops to unit leadership and participating staff.
• Standardize mock code evaluation tools to assess team performance, role clarity, communication (e.g., closed-loop, SBAR), time-to-intervention, and adherence to resuscitation guidelines (e.g., AHA/PALS/ACLS/NRP).
• Agregate and trend mock code performance data across departments and campuses to identify systemic gaps and prioritize targeted retraining and incorporation into other Resuscitation Core programming (ACLS, PALS, BLS, NRP).
• Partner with resuscitation committees, code blue committees, and emergency preparedness leadership to align mock code findings with system-wide quality and safety initiatives.
• Establish and oversee instructor audit, feedback review, and coaching to ensure fidelity to best practices and maximize effectiveness of instructors across the resuscitation core (BLS, ACLS, PALS, NRP).
• Create training opportunities for simulation team members and faculty around clinical competencies identified as key to professional growth and simulation quality.
• Implements and administers systems, policies, and procedures to support the strategic goals and sustainable growth of the simulation center and programming.
• Scales and iterates processes across the UChicago Medicine health system to promote quality and standardization of simulation sessions across sites.
• Travels to locations throughout the health system as necessary to promote continuity and collaboration with a focus on Resuscitation Core and Mock Code programming.
• Creates and fosters strong partnerships across the Simulation Center as well as throughout the UChicago Medicine health system, serving as a liaison and representative of the Simulation Center.
• Operates and maintains simulator technologies ranging from anatomic models and task trainers to screen-based simulation to full-body patient simulators and virtual reality surgical simulators.
• Buys a growth-mindset to all duties, actively learning new technologies and skills.
• Supports adult learning principles and the learning experience for all center users.
• Serves as an active participant (i.e. imbedded actor) in simulation activities as needed.
• Develops and communicates program priorities and performance standards and assesses operations using these criteria.
• Plans and conducts quality assurance reviews and recommends changes as appropriate.
• Has a deep understanding when interacting with faculty, researchers and staff for committee work or information.
• Performs other related work as needed.

Qualifications

• Education: Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
• Work Experience: Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 5-7 years of work experience in a related job discipline.
• Certifications: Preferred qualifications include a Masters degree in education, nursing, instructional design, or a related clinical field.

Skills

• Knowledge of human anatomy and physiologic states.
• Strong understanding of simulation-based education principles, including scenario setup, debriefing tools, and learner-centered methodologies.
• Excellent organizational, interpersonal, and professional communication skills.
• Knowledge of patient simulation services, technologies and applications.
• Proficiency in MS software applications (Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), database management, and Internet utilization.
• Ability to express clinical information clearly and simply.
• Ability to learn new skills and technology quickly and independently.
• Ability to work well under pressure, set priorities, and make critical decisions.
• Ability to maintain confidentiality regarding job assignments and sensitive issues.
• Ability to work with internal and external individuals from different disciplines and different levels of training.
• Self-motivated and requires minimal supervision with the ability to work as a team member.
• Flexibility and adaptability to work varying hours/days/evening/weekends.
• Excellent organizational and problem-solving skills to manage and resolve issues promptly.

Benefits

• The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off.