Innovations in nursing education: Using simulation to construct clinical experience

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on educational and academic organizations. Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs have needed to rapidly transition from providing on-site education to digital or hybrid models. Clinical partners were forced to suspend in-person clinical meetings attributable to increasing patient volumes, lack of non-public protective equipment, resources and teachers, and the choice not to reveal inexperienced students to critically in poor health Covid-19 patients. However, students were still required to proceed their clinical studies. How did they do it?

Simulation. Healthcare simulation in nursing education shouldn’t be a brand new concept. In the past, it was used to show and confirm competences by creating real-world situations and experiences. Simulation-based learning frameworks deal with a learner-centered approach to skills in teaching, collaboration, clinical decision-making, prioritization, communication, and demanding pondering to support clinical judgment in patient care (Kubin et al., 2020; Lee et al. . , 2019).

Several sorts of healthcare simulation tools and scenarios are currently utilized in education, including full-body mannequins – either static, where the mannequin doesn’t reply to the coed, or high fidelity when it does – for task trainers or actors portraying patients, to simulated scenarios healthcare using augmented and virtual reality software platforms.

With the shift from in-person classes to virtual classes attributable to the pandemic, virtual simulation (VS) has come to the forefront and has enabled many students to experience realistic experiences using digital tools, from the comfort and safety of their homes. These programs provide students with authentic experiences to interact, learn, and improve clinical decision-making, collaboration, and clinical judgment skills (Lioce et al., 2020). Nursing schools have adopted virtual simulation tools as a substitute for clinical experience. Responding to the needs of educators and students, VS product developers have collaborated with many educators to synthesize latest and improved simulation programs that optimize student learning.

Foresight and the shift to using health care simulations as a part of the curriculum have had a serious impact on many nursing schools’ response to the pandemic. Several years earlier, the Society for Healthcare Simulation supported the usage of simulation as a viable, evidence-based alternative to in-person clinical experience (Foronda et al., 2018; Foronda et al., 2020; Verkuyl and Hughes, 2019), while the National Council of State Boards Nursing has previously recognized that in-person clinical experience could also be difficult to acquire even before the pandemic, and subsequently beneficial that simulation could replace as much as half of the hours of clinical experience required in undergraduate studies (Hayden et al., 2014).

Both of those decisions allowed nursing students to proceed their clinical experiences despite the Covid-19 pandemic. As researchers begin to have a look at the clinical competencies of scholars who graduate during this historic time, it is going to be interesting to see how simulation and virtual education compare to in-person learning and clinical experiences.

Now, as students return to in-person learning, hybrid learning, and clinical experiences, simulation will proceed to evolve and be used. In fact, healthcare organizations have found simulation to be an efficient approach to learn latest skills and assess and ensure competency of all nursing staff.

Nursing education has shown it may well evolve quickly to satisfy students’ needs during a health crisis. Collaboration and innovation amongst simulation product developers, educators, learning management systems and technologies have positioned nursing education well to support the long run of health care.

Foronda et al., (2018). Student preferences and perceptions of learning with vSIM for nursing. , 33, 27-32.

Foronda et al. (2020). Virtual simulation in nursing education: A scientific review covering 1996–2019., 14(1), 46–54.

Hayden et al., (2014). NCSBN National Simulation Study: A longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial replacing clinical hours with simulation in prelicensure nursing education. 5: S1-S40.

Kubin et al., (2020). Support prioritization using a mixed group and individual simulation approach. , 45(1), 7-8.
Lee et al., (2019). The impact of simulation-based learning on nursing students’ competencies and clinical outcomes. , 41, 102646.

Lioce et al. (2020). Working Group on Terminology and Concepts (ed.). (2^II ed.). Rockville, Maryland: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Verkuyl, M., and Hughes, M. (2019). Virtual game simulation in nursing education: A mixed-methods study. , 20(C), 9-14.