SIMULATION IN PRE-CLINICAL NURSING CURRICULUM AS A MEANS OF IMPLEMENTING EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT

Technological innovations are advancing practice in several domains of nursing education. Simulation can provide innovative learning experiences, as well as developing a better understanding of the didactic content. Simulated experiences give the student opportunities to be involved in patient care experiences they may otherwise not take part in, e.g. actual clinical settings.

Our project’s rationale is to enhance and utilise simulation training in the nursing bachelor curriculum at Lovisenberg Diaconal University College. The project is estimated to start during 2010.

The main objective of the project is to develop knowledge of how simulation as a pedagogical method can be implemented in basic nursing education to make the nursing students experience the pre-clinical training situations as more relevant and give better learning outcomes. Additional objectives are;

- To study nursing students’ experiences with different methods of simulation.
- To test video recording as a tool for reflection and formative assessment.
- To describe how the students perceive anxiety and stress related to the simulation.
- To develop patient cases and scenarios.

Simulation training is mostly used in complex and advanced nursing/medical team scenarios in acute patient settings, and not to any great extent in basic procedure training for nursing students, nor as a method of teaching/facilitating for ethical and moral reflection.

This projects aims to explore the didactic effects of using simulation training with first and second year nursing students. Our main method of documentation and pedagogic feedback will be the use of video in debriefing sessions with the students. The recording of the debriefing sessions gives opportunities for faculty members to analyse their own ability to effectively facilitate the reflective discussion by the students. Additional benefits of using video recordings are that the recordings used in simulation sessions, may be used as evidence of learning outcomes (when assessing the students clinical competence). In addition the recordings can be used as a systematic tool for evaluation and development of the faculty member’s pedagogical capacities and knowledge as well as a tool for general development of the simulation facility / training centre.

One of the partial objectives is to develop patient cases and scenarios based on the descriptions of student’s and teacher’s learning objectives in the curriculum. Meaningful and realistic patient scenarios will stimulate the students understanding of the skills necessary to perform the procedures, thus giving a deeper understanding of the context and complexity involved. By gradually introducing more and different information concerning the patient and context, the scenarios can adapt to different levels of training.

It is also possible to adapt the scenarios to encompass parallel training and reflection in communication, ethics, supervision, and documentation, as well as incorporating science and medical knowledge to basic skills training. These dimensions need further clarification and systematisation to provide the necessary theoretical framework needed for this project.