Workshop Purpose / Description

How do organisations ensure that experience becomes capability, and capability becomes readiness?

This interactive workshop explores how simulation, operational experience, education, training, and lessons identified can be connected to create meaningful improvements in individual, team, and organisational performance.

Using the Military Circle of Learning as a discussion framework, participants will examine how simulation can support capability development beyond individual skills training, linking education, rehearsal, validation, performance improvement, and lessons exploitation into a continuous learning cycle.

The session draws upon experiences from the STREAM programme (Simulation Training for Resource-poor, Extreme and Austere Medicine), including implementation and evaluation in East Africa and Ukraine. These projects explored how simulation can prepare clinicians and teams for prolonged casualty care, extended evacuation timelines, limited resource availability, and complex decision-making when definitive care is delayed.

Through facilitated discussion, practical examples, and shared experience, participants will explore how organisations can build learning systems that adapt, improve, and remain relevant to operational requirements.

What Participants Will Explore

• The Military Circle of Learning as a framework for capability development.
• How lessons identified can be converted into meaningful learning interventions.
• Insights from the STREAM programme and its application in operational and austere environments.
• Using simulation to prepare teams for prolonged casualty care and extended patient management.
• The role of simulation in developing decision-making, teamwork, leadership, and clinical performance.
• Balancing technology with high-value learning.
• Creating sustainable approaches to education, training, and readiness across dispersed organisations.

What Participants Will Take Away

• A practical understanding of how simulation can support capability development across the Military Circle of Learning.
• Lessons from the design, delivery, and evaluation of the STREAM programme in East Africa and Ukraine.
• Examples of how simulation can prepare personnel and teams for prolonged casualty care challenges.
• Ideas for integrating operational experience, lessons identified, and simulation into existing education and training systems.
• Shared perspectives from peers across the Special Operations community.