John Vozenilek, MD-CSTAR Director

John Vozenilek, MD is a board-certified emergency physician who works clinically in the three hospitals of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH) and is an expert in the use of simulation for training and evaluation. Dr. Vozenilek has developed focused training at nearly every level of expertise, including practicing physicians, house staff, medical students, nursing professionals and students, nurse-extenders, and pre-hospital providers.

Currently he is engaged in the integration of simulation training into patient safety efforts as PI on the AHRQ funded grant, Simulation-based Training Program to Augment EMR-based Handoff Tool. Dr. Vozenilek is Co-Investigator on the three-year Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Targeted Issue Grant to develop a simulation–based pediatric emergency medicine curriculum for emergency medicine residents (PI:Adler, M).

Dr Vozenilek directs two simulation centers within ENH and is responsible for several large scale simulation-based patient safety efforts for all nurses within the three-hospital ENH system, including experiential training using a standardized communications method, adopted the SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendations) reporting tool, the “Situation Room”, an in-situ effort designed to increase situational awareness, and efforts in reduction on injury during Labor and Delivery shoulder dystocia events. The process of experience, feedback, and experience allows healthcare workers to practice, and this has led to the widespread adoption of patient safety tools throughout the corporation.

Medical students, Internal Medicine, and Emergency Medicine residents from both Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago are other frequent recipients of training at the simulation centers. All of the last four classes of graduating medical students (approximately 150 per class) from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have received a simulation experience in emergency medicine management principles at his center in Evanston.

Dr. Vozenilek currently serves Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine as the Director of the Northwestern McGaw Simulation Network. Dr Vozenilek has national activities in simulation education for Emergency Medicine. He has created an online national collaborative repository for peer review of simulation based training and serves as Associate Editor Association of American Medical Colleges’ MedEdPORTAL.

He is the Past Chairman of the Simulation Interest Group for the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine, and is member of that organization’s Task Force on Simulation. He serves as Medical Advisor for the Chicago testing center for Part 2 CS of the United States Medical Licensure Exam (USMLE). In this capacity, he is responsible for the implementation and refinement of SP-based evaluation cases for high-stakes evaluation as well as the selection, training, and validation of the nearly 100 SPs who work in this center. Dr. Vozenilek has served in this role since April 2003.