Background

High-fidelity simulation (HFS) provides a controlled environment for training, allowing ambulance clinicians’(ACs) to practice and refine their skills without risking patient safety. Additionally, it enables the replication of complex scenarios, ensuring comprehensive preparedness for real-life emergencies. However, there remains a need to understand how frontline professionals in ambulance services experience these simulation-based activities. This is especially true when using high-fidelity modalities that aim to replicate real-world scenarios for research purposes.

Aim

To explore clinically active ACs´ experiences of participating in HFS.

Methods

A qualitative design involving dyadic interviews with 16 ACs participating in a simulation scenario was conducted. The data were analyzed using the inductive content analysis method outlined by Elo and Kyngäs.

Results

Participants emphasized the importance of adopting the right mindset from the start of the scenario, as mental readiness was crucial for immersion. Although the scenario felt realistic, achieving full psychological fidelity remained challenging, as participants’ awareness of the simulation setup influenced their behavior during the scenario.

Conclusions

The study underscores the importance of carefully designed HFS scenarios that prioritize psychological and environmental fidelity to support authentic engagement among clinically active ACs. This is particularly important in pre-hospital care, where direct access to real clinical situations is often restricted by ethical, practical, and organizational constraints. The findings indicate that well constructed simulations with coherent workflow sequences, professional actor–based patient representation, and realistic settings can function as a methodological bridge for capturing complex cognitive and emotional processes that are otherwise difficult to study in real world practice. Further refinement of simulation design, focusing on psychological presence rather than complete physical or technical realism, may strengthen simulation-based research as a method for investigating experiential aspects of pre-hospital care.