What does it mean to be a Junior Professor of Healthcare Simulation today? From early-morning preparation to designing interprofessional training and researching competency development, Benjamin Roszipal’s work spans undergraduate nursing education, simulation-based learning, and mentoring future healthcare professionals. His role as Junior Professor of Healthcare Simulation reflects the emergence of a new academic profession at the intersection of clinical practice, pedagogy, and research.
Benjamin Roszipal
Junior Professor of Healthcare Simulation at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten, Austria. His work centers on teaching and advancing simulation-based learning in undergraduate nursing and interprofessional health education. His research explores how clinical competence develops and how it can be rigorously assessed in simulation-based training.
At around eight o’clock each morning, I board the train from Vienna to St. Pölten. By then, the day is already in motion. I’ve usually been to the gym, cleared my head, and set the tone for what lies ahead. I’ve learned that the quality of the early hours shapes everything that follows.
The commute is not a pause but a continuation, time to think, refine ideas, and mentally prepare for the structured intensity of academic life.
When I arrive at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten, my first routine is intentional and unhurried. I review emails, map out priorities, and reconnect with colleagues. In an environment where clinical readiness is not an abstract ambition but a concrete mandate, alignment matters. Healthcare simulation is fundamentally collaborative; meaningful learning does not emerge in isolation.
Often, it’s the brief hallway conversation or the five minutes before a meeting that set the tone for the entire day.
Sometimes, those small moments matter most.
Where Training Becomes Responsibility
When lectures or simulation trainings are scheduled, much of my morning is spent refining them rather than expanding them. Over time, I’ve learned that clarity matters more than volume, even, and especially, for undergraduate students.
My current teaching focus is undergraduate nursing education. These students are approaching the threshold between theory and responsibility. Within a short time, they will make decisions that carry real consequences. My role is to help them step into that responsibility with confidence.
At the same time, I am deeply involved in developing an interprofessional simulation program for the department of health sciences. Nurses, physiotherapists, and dietitians are often educated separately, yet they will spend their professional lives working side by side. When education reflects that reality, something changes.
Patients do not experience care in disciplinary segments.
Students shouldn’t either.
Last year, I introduced a simulation-based course that has since become one of the most defining projects in my teaching. In this format, third-year nursing students rotate through different clinical settings, from surgery to palliative and pediatric care, in a blended learning structure. For the first time in their studies, there is no supervising instructor in the room.
They act.
They hesitate.
They decide.
The absence of immediate supervision changes the dynamic. It shifts responsibility fully to them and creates deeper reflection during the debriefing. The goal is not perfection. It is readiness and safety.
This is often the moment when students begin to understand what professional responsibility truly feels like. Not as a theoretical concept, but as a lived experience. Seeing that realization take hold, the quiet seriousness in the room, the change in posture, the change in tone, is deeply motivating. It reminds me why simulation matters.
Measuring What Actually Matters
My research runs parallel to my teaching and constantly informs it. The central focus of my academic work, and of my PhD, is competency development in undergraduate healthcare education.
That focus developed over time. I began in hands-on simulation in preclinical emergency care, working in high-stakes training environments. From there, my work expanded into extended reality applications in healthcare education. As the technology advanced, so did my questions. I became increasingly interested not only in what simulation can do, but in how competence actually develops and how we can understand that development in meaningful ways.
Three years immersed in virtual simulation sharpened that perspective. Extended reality can foster competence, particularly in decision-making, repetition, and confidence-building. However, its impact depends entirely on how it is pedagogically structured.
Technology does not educate. Educational design does.
Putting that principle into practice defines much of my research work. Some days it means analyzing data. On others, drafting manuscripts, preparing conference presentations, or refining research proposals. Translating findings into contributions that withstand peer review and advance the field is part of the responsibility.
Alongside my doctoral research, I contribute to projects ranging from interprofessional simulation curricula to competency-oriented nursing education. While the contexts differ, the underlying question remains consistent: how do we design learning environments that genuinely develop competence?
Balancing these commitments can be demanding, yet the diversity keeps the work intellectually sharp. It challenges assumptions, prevents routine, and ensures that no two weeks look the same.
That is precisely what makes it sustainable.
Learning That Moves Both Ways
A significant part of my work unfolds beyond the classroom. I supervise and mentor students through the process of scientific writing, a part of academia I care deeply about.
What I value most in these conversations is dialogue. Explaining complex relationships, navigating methodological challenges, and unpacking theoretical frameworks is rewarding. At the same time, students often approach questions with a perspective that unsettles established thinking in productive ways.
Sometimes, the most direct question is also the most important one.
For me, mentorship is never a one-way transfer of knowledge. It is a shared process of inquiry, where understanding deepens on both sides and assumptions are reconsidered.
What People Mean When They Ask About Simulation
At some point in almost every conversation, the question arises: what is simulation, actually? For many, it still evokes images of mannequins or technical replicas of clinical environments.
I have learned to answer differently.
Simulation, as I understand and practice it, is not about reproducing reality perfectly. It is about creating meaningful situations in which learners can safely think, decide, communicate, and reflect, without causing harm. It is a protected space where complexity becomes visible, where uncertainty is allowed, and where failure turns into a resource rather than a risk.
At its best, simulation is not a substitute for practice. It is preparation for responsibility.
When I reflect on what continues to motivate me, one moment stands out. After teaching a course in prehospital trauma management, I received an email from a former student. Two days after completing the course, they were involved in a critical emergency. The competencies practiced during the course guided their actions.
The patient survived. The message ended with a simple sentence: without the training, the outcome might have been different.
For an educator, there are few moments more meaningful. They are quiet reminders of why all this matters, and why simulation exists long before reality demands it.
Beyond the Campus
As the day winds down and I return to Vienna, the rhythm shifts. Often, I write with headphones on, listening to indie or alternative rock while finishing a manuscript or refining ideas that did not fully settle during the day. Outside academia, I draw and illustrate. It is a creative counterbalance to analytical work.
In many ways, that balance reflects my professional life. Healthcare simulation lives between structure and imagination, between evidence and anticipation. It prepares people for moments that cannot be rehearsed in reality and asks what remains when guidance falls away.
Tomorrow morning, I will board the train again at eight.
And once more, the work will begin quietly, long before competence is ever tested where it truly matters.
Declaration on the use of AI: generative AI was used to support linguistic editing and improve the clarity of the text. All ideas, content, and conclusions are original to the author.
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