Nicole Jones De Rooy

Simulated death can be an appropriate training tool for medical students.

Editor – In their recent letter, Bruppacher, Chen and Lachapelle expressed concern about the potential dangers of using simulated death in scenario-based teaching for health professionals in training, suggesting that such a strategy ‘would be best directed towards senior trainees whose scope of practice and responsibilities are commensurate with managing such complex scenarios’. Given that the death of the patient is by far the most common outcome in the resuscitation of real patients who experience cardiac arrest in hospitals and that such emergencies are managed by teams that often include practitioners at all levels of experience, this seems a surprising assertion.