I am not a pilot. My question relates to an article I am researching about safety in health care as it compares to aviation. One area I am interested in is simulation. If anyone has time to address any of the following questions about simulation in aviation, I would have a better perspective about how much health care needs to change to approach the safety record in aviation.
1. How much time on average does a commercial pilot spend in simulator training per year?
2. Do you have materials to study, such as a manual, that tells you what specific emergency situations you must know for the simulator?
3. What is the purpose of simulator training? I mean is it to practice emergency situations that cannot be practiced in a real airplane, or is just to improve your communication skills?

The reason why I am asking these questions is that although medicine is trying to incorporate safety ideas from aviation, there seems to be a huge gap between what medicine is actually doing and what pilots are doing. This seems to come from a lack of understanding about why certain safety practices in aviation are used.

For example, in my field of anesthesiology, simulator training is currently required for a very small percentage of practitioners. Those few people who must do simulator training, only need to attend one "workshop" every 10 years. They are given no manual about what scenarios to prepare for so the failure rate is high. However, no grade is given and everyone passes. Apparently, the idea is to learn to "communicate".
Any comments are welcome.