Dr Arunaz Kumar receives national award for simulation excellence

Professor Debra Nestel and
Dr Arunaz Kumar

Dr Arunaz Kumar from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology has received the Simulation Australasia’s Simulation Achievement Award for 2019 for her significant contribution to the advancement of modelling and simulation in Australia or New Zealand.

Dr Kumar’s journey in simulation began in 2010 when she undertook a Graduate Certificate in Health Professional Education at Monash University. In 2011, her career in simulation took off, when she became the Discipline Coordinator of Women’s Health, Monash University for undergraduate medical students. Within months of starting the role, Dr Kumar founded WHIPLS (Women’s Health Interprofessional Learning by Simulation) – an innovative interprofessional program for medical and midwifery students.

This program is now part of the medical and midwifery curriculum for all Monash University campuses, including Malaysia. She has received multiple invitations to conferences and institutions to present this innovative educational model and a number of Universities have commenced similar simulation based interprofessional undergraduate workshops.

Since then, Dr Kumar has developed many more simulation workshops including WHEW (Women’s Health Emergency Workshop), Home Birth in-situ simulation and ONE-Sim (obstetric and neonatal emergency simulation). In 2018, Dr Kumar completed her PhD on “Interprofessional education using Simulation in Obstetrics and Gynaecology”. She has received multiple grants and awards for her simulation based education work, including the Monash School of Medicine “Excellence in Teaching Prize”, and Monash Doctors’ “Excellence in Education Research” award and is frequently featurequoted in the media. Dr Kumar also runs simulation workshops overseas in low and middle-income countries, for which received a Pride of Australia nomination in 2018.

Dr Kumar’s vision has always been that by teaching individual members of teams how to work together at the early stages of their careers, results in better working relationships and leads to enhanced regard for each other at a the senior level stage. She also believes simulation is the best tool to accomplish this as the participant learns new clinical skills whilst subconsciously building regard for their interprofessional peers and colleagues.