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Title
Fellowship Director
Area of Study/Expertise
Healthcare Simulation, Emergency Medicine
Office Location
One Robert Wood Johnson Place, MEB 258, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Phone Number
732-235-8717
Email
colleen.donovan@rutgers.edu
Website
Website
@robodocem
LinkedIn

Colleen M. Donovan, MD, CHSE-A, FACEP

EM Simulation Fellowship Director

Colleen M. Donovan, MD, is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and the Simulation Director at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. 

She is board-certified in Emergency Medicine, subspecialty board-certified in EMS, and is credentialled as a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator – Advanced (CHSE-A). She practices clinically at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) in New Brunswick, NJ.  

She has created and run over 100 unique simulation scenarios for medical students (MS1-4), Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Neurology and Surgery residents, and attending physicians.   

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she created multiple new formats for medical education, including adapting scenarios and computer software for tele-simulations, incorporating augmented reality, and developing an online cardiogenic shock Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game.  For these efforts, she was awarded an RBHS Innovations in Education and Teaching Pilot Grant in 2020. 

She designs and runs the annual Transition-to-Residency (TTR) Bootcamp simulations, where each graduating MS4 student must work as part of a resuscitation team for three specialty specific undifferentiated shock scenarios. 

She continues to develop disaster and protocol exercises for practicing physicians, and provides bedside teaching for EM, FM and psychiatry residents as well as 4th year medical students.  She has been recognized with multiple awards for bringing simulation to Rutgers UME and GME students and has been chosen by the student body to lead the Oath of Hippocrates for the 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 RWJMS graduating classes.  She was awarded the 2024 Educator of the Year by the New Jersey chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians (NJ ACEP). In November of 2024, she earned her CHSE-A credential from the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH). The CHSE-A indicates that Dr. Donovan is recognized at the highest level as a healthcare simulation expert. As of 2024, only ~150 people have this certification worldwide. 

 

 

   

Publications

  • Burns and Beyond: A Whakaari/White Island Volcanic Disaster Scenario, Donovan, C. M., Franke, E., Baker, P., & Locke, M. B. , In Press, 2025a - In A. Milstein (Ed.), Case Book of Disaster Medicine Simulation Scenarios

  • Sim Cases – Atrial Fibrillation with RVR and Cardioversion – EM. , Donovan, Colleen M.; Arora, Millie., 2024 - In The TTR Compendium, edited by M. Kathryn Mutter, Transition to Residency Educators.

    TTR Compendium

  • Augmented Reality Integration in Manikin-Based Simulations: Bringing Basic Science to the Critical Care Bedside with Limited Augmented Reality Resources. , Donovan, CM, Med Sci Educ. 2023 Jun 27;33(4):829-833. doi: 10.1007/s40670-023-01821-z. PMID: 37546210; PMCID: PMC10403467

  • Ready patient one: How to turn an in-person critical care simulation scenario into an online serious game., Donovan, C. M., Cooper, A., & Kim, S., 2021 - Curēus (Palo Alto, CA), 13(9), e17746. doi:10.7759/cureus.17746

Awards & Distinctions