3D-Printable Tabletop Simulation Toolkit for Hospital/Prehospital Crisis, Patient Flow and Resource Management Exercises

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This is a 3D-printable tabletop simulation toolkit designed for clinical simulation, hospital and prehospital preparedness exercises, patient-flow training, crisis-resource management, disaster medicine scenarios, and interprofessional decision-making workshops.

The core idea is simple:

Everything happens on the table — nothing stays only “in someone’s head.”

During tabletop simulations, teams often discuss patient movement, staff allocation, equipment availability, diagnostic bottlenecks, triage priorities, and hospital capacity. However, if these elements are only verbalised, participants may develop different mental pictures of the same scenario. This toolkit helps make the situation visible, shared, and physically manipulable.

The set includes 3D-printable tokens representing patients, relatives, hospital areas, vehicles, diagnostic resources, critical equipment, team cards, priority markers, and other elements that can be used to build a clear tabletop scenario.

The models were originally developed at the Medical Education Technology Centre of Rīga Stradiņš University, Latvia, as part of a hospital-requested tabletop simulation project. The system was used to support preparedness planning for a potential increased influx of critically ill patients during a large public event.

These models are not intended to replace full-scale simulation. Instead, they provide a low-cost, flexible, reusable and visually clear way to explore complex clinical systems before, during, or after higher-fidelity simulation activities.

The models can be printed in different colours to represent different roles, triage categories, hospital zones, urgency levels, or scenario-specific meanings. You can also add labels, stickers, numbers, magnets, Velcro, or dry-erase markings depending on your facilitation style.

Suggested use

Print the required models, place them on a table, whiteboard, hospital floor plan, laminated map, or printed scenario layout, and use them to visualise what is happening in the scenario.

Patients can be moved between areas. Staff can be assigned to patients or rooms. Equipment tokens can be placed where resources are available or missing. Diagnostic tokens can represent bottlenecks. Warning signs and priority markers can be used to show unsafe areas, delayed care, escalation points or critical decisions.

The methodology can be adapted to your own objectives. The most important principle is that the table becomes the shared “situation picture” for everyone in the room.

Included model types

This set may include:

• Person token

• Triage ring

• Person-relative token

• Patient bed

• Critical equipment token

• Ambulance car token

• Personal car token

• CT token

• MRI token

• Wet floor sign

• Critical team card

• Person token base colour changer

• Priority sign

More models may be added in the future.

If you need additional tabletop simulation models for your own scenario, hospital layout, course, or training programme, feel free to contact me through Printables, LinkedIn, or email:

[email protected]
www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandrs-oborins-b97735209

I would be very happy to see how this toolkit is used in different simulation centres, hospitals, universities and emergency preparedness courses. If you use these models, please share photos, comments, ideas, or adaptations.