Abstract:

Background
Globally, nursing is facing a continues challenge to reform future clinical education to bring an outcome of a safer nursing practice. The need to teach nursing skills is becoming an acute problem in clinical curricula driven by shortage of nursing faculty, increasing number of students, shortage of clinical areas, regulations, unstable patient acuity and complexities of health care system. To bridge theory to practice in nursing education, a simulation teaching strategy using a virtual nursing laboratory has been integrated to teach foundation nursing skills to acquire safe level of competency at our university. Simulation is a teaching approach which provides innovative, interactive, real nursing world experience for BSN students at SQU virtual nursing laboratory in order to gain safe level of practice and self confidence of performing basic nursing skills prior to their clinical training. Clinical skills performance by the student reflects the comprehension and application of nursing core concepts, principles of nursing care using skills as intervention, the rationales of specific technique to support clinical reasoning of implementing a specific nursing skills to intervene patient care. Practicing skill performance more and more in a virtual nursing lab exposed the student to no risks to patients and make the student feels not threatened to practice.
Significance:
This action research examines (1) the efficacy of virtual environment in teaching the foundation nursing skills. (2) sufficient evidence to recommend its use in advanced nursing courses; and (3) how virtual nursing laboratories as safe learning environment will change future agenda in skill development.
Methods
Cohort 2006, fifty students, registered in Fundamentals of Nursing participated in experimental study at the College of Medicine/ Nursing Program. The human patient simulators are programmed with clinical scenarios to display different nursing skills. The student is immersed in a real time of measuring vital signs on human patient simulator who is placed in a realistic nursing unit within the virtual nursing lab. The whole performance of the student is recorded in a video tape to be used during the debriefing session. The process was constructed for students to acquire practical learning to perform the basic nursing skills in a small group tutorial and experience a simulated nursing case study in a constructed virtual hospital patient’s unit in a nursing laboratory. The student is immersed in a virtual clinical environment. The student demonstrated the steps of doing the nursing procedures supported with clinical reasoning in addressing the actual needs of the simulated patients. Learning took place in an interactive environment that enable debriefing for performance analysis to share opinions and views among students with instructors/ facilitators. Debriefing is done at the end of the student’s performance of measuring vital signs. During this period an exchange of information on what was observed, heard, felt, and measured were discussed. During debriefing the students were guided by the instructor as to what was done correctly and what needs to be improved, also, the students were have the opportunity to ask questions and to review what principles and core concepts they have learned.

Keywords:

simulation teaching strategy, patient safety, safe practice, competency, virtual.