As the largest and consistently ranked “most trusted profession” in health care, nursing can have a strong voice in education and safety on a global level, says Jared M. Kutzin, PhD, DNP, MS, MPH. As a nurse and President of the international Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH), he is working to make that vision a reality.
In January 2025, Dr. Kutzin was elected president of the SSH, a global society with 6,000 members from more than 70 countries.
“The Society for Simulation in Healthcare includes health professions, such as nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists, and Emergency Medical Technicians, health educators, standardized patients, researchers, operations specialists, and many others,” he says. “It’s a collection of different groups coming together, from around the world, to improve the safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of health care services.”
The STAR Center
Closer to home, Dr. Kutzin is Senior Director of the Simulation Teaching and Research (STAR) Center at The Mount Sinai Hospital. The STAR Center opened in 2014 as part of the Department of Emergency Medicine of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Its goal is to provide a realistic training environment for students, residents, fellows, and faculty, while also offering programs for nurses, pharmacists, perfusionists, respiratory therapists, and other health professionals and community members across the Mount Sinai Health System.
“What’s unique about the STAR Center,” Dr. Kutzin says, “is that we are a safe, welcoming immersive space where interdisciplinary and multi-professional teams can learn to work with, from, and about each other. Because simulation sits at the intersection of clinical practice, education, patient safety, quality, process improvement, and administration, we are uniquely positioned to help bridge the boundaries in health care, constantly pushing and making those critical connections among different departments, divisions, units, and hospitals.”
“Simulation represents a shift in the way that we think about teaching people,” Dr. Kutzin says, “how we educate, assess, practice, hone, and study human behavior as it relates to health care. We are giving students, faculty, and staff the ability to learn real-life skills in a safe and controlled environment and to continuously improve the quality, safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of the care we deliver, both individually and collectively.”
One prime example is found in the New Graduate Nurse Fellowship Program in the Department of Emergency Medicine, which has demonstrated a 94 percent retention rate for new graduate Emergency Department (ED) nurses in their first two years of employment. The program features five sessions, with a curriculum that is continually refined. The topics covered—both clinical and nonclinical—allow new graduates to scale up their practice, become more independent, more knowledgeable, and stronger in key areas.
Dr. Kutzin attributes the program’s success to several key elements, including the selection of the right candidates, the involvement of preceptors on the unit, and the education these new nurses receive from their clinical educators.
“Everybody who comes to us is smart, intelligent, capable, with good foundational knowledge,” Dr. Kutzin says. “What we’re doing for them is putting it all together in a way that allows them to translate everything from their heads into their fingertips. I think that’s the most important aspect of what we do. They also become part of a community of practice that provides the support they need to be successful in these fast-paced, demanding environments.”
STAR Center in the Community
The STAR Center operates successful programs throughout the Health System, including training for interprofessional health teams that include physicians, advanced practice providers, residents, respiratory therapists, and nurses. The Center also recently introduced a mobile simulation vehicle that can bring simulation training to venues within the Health System and the broader community, including Brooklyn, Queens, and the US Open Tennis Championships.
“Mount Sinai is the health sponsor for the US Open, where we are responsible for caring for the players,” Dr. Kutzin says. “We know from other large sporting events that the level of response and the timeliness of that response can greatly impact outcomes. This response includes tournament officials, umpires, ball staff, security personnel, a third-party ambulance service, and additional personnel. Responding quickly, appropriately, and with the right gear requires a massive, coordinated effort. Preparation is critical, and our high-tech simulation enables us to thoroughly consider all the permutations and test the entire system. We literally drop our simulation mannequin on the court, push an activation button from the umpire’s chair, and we’re off: running a code or other emergency and learning all we can. We then debrief as a team to ensure that any lessons that are learned are translated into practice. Year after year, we are constantly refining the response process.”
The STAR Program also has a public health component, which involves outreach to the community to raise health awareness. At Public School 38, staff used simulation mannequins to conduct CPR training, a New York State requirement for high school graduation. At a local elementary school, they partnered with Mount Sinai nurses, physicians, and child life specialists to hold a Teddy Bear Clinic, demonstrating the importance of wearing a bike helmet and explaining what happens if a patient needs oxygen, gets a cast, requires sutures, or undergoes other related procedures.
Looking Ahead
Looking ahead, Dr. Kutzin sees the benefits of better integrating simulation into even more training and preparedness initiatives in health care. He and his team are exploring opportunities to conduct interprofessional education at the undergraduate level through the nursing and medical schools. During the recent renovation of the Emergency Department at The Mount Sinai Hospital, simulation played a crucial role in shaping throughput—moving patients from admission to discharge— and environmental design. And simulation plays an important role in research. A current example involves measuring stress levels of nurses using wearable devices and observing differences following critical events when individuals are exposed to different types of lights or light-filtering devices.
The unwritten mission of everything Dr. Kutzin does is to build connections and span gaps and boundaries continuously. As a nurse who is the elected president of an interprofessional health care society, Dr. Kutzin is a living example of this approach.
Read more about Jared Kutzin, PhD, DNP, MS, MPH
Dr. Kutzin is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Nursing, and was an inaugural fellow in the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) Simulation Academy. He has served as a Health Resources and Services Administration reviewer and on the Baldrige Board of Examiners. Dr. Kutzin served as Chair for the SSH Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator Committee and is currently a member of the Society’s Board of Directors and an Accreditation Committee site reviewer. He assumed the role of President of SSH, the international simulation society, in January 2025.
A master educator in the Mount Sinai Institute for Medical Education, Dr. Kutzin serves on several curriculum revision committees at the Icahn School of Medicine. In addition, he is a member of the New York State Board of Nursing and the state Emergency Medical Services Council. Dr. Kutzin was previously the Deputy Editor for Simulation for MedEdPORTAL, the journal of teaching and learning resources of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and is currently on the Executive Editorial Board for the Journal of Emergency Nursing. His research interests include educational methodologies, patient safety and quality, and how the built environment affects care. In 2025, Dr. Kutzin was recognized by Becker’s Hospital Review as a “Great Leader in Healthcare” and as one of “132 Patient Safety Experts to Know.”