2008 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference: The science of simulation in healthcare: Defining and developing clinical expertise

The 2008 AEM Consensus Conference was designed to help define future directions in simulation-based research in EM and across health care. The conference examined approaches to both developing and defining expertise in four domains: individual?cognitive, group, technical, and systems. The timing of this conference in Washington, DC, with a Simulation Bill before Congress, represented a unique opportunity to help identify priority funding areas and to collaborate with colleagues across disciplines. We hope you find the proceedings of the conference, the consensus topic papers, and the original articles in this special issue of the Journal useful in helping to advance the science of simulation in health care.