TRAINING OF BLIND SIMULATED PATIENTS: EXPERIENCE REPORT

Introduction:
Simulated patients constitute a real possibility of providing learning, due to their potential to fulfil conditions close to ideals and to manage disadvantages regarding the use of a real patient by training people or actors to perform their roles in realistic situations in the teaching institution. The use of simulated patients in educational units to train abilities and to evaluate students is a resource to make skills. This method is disseminated by enabling the provision of formative evaluation and learning through the proper correction of errors.

Objective:
To report the experience of training blind simulated patients.

Method:
This is an experience report from a dissertational study that aimed at evaluating the communication skills of nurses with the blind patient. The research was carried out from May 2015 to June 2016. The study population comprised three blind people chosen by means of an association for visually impaired people. Participants were trained according to the protocol developed on screen research to work as a hypertensive blind subject during the Nursing consult. This research is part of a multicenter study that had been approved by the Ethics Committee, under protocol number 652.134.

Results and Discussion:
Training was conducted in five meetings. The first one presented the research proposal and verified the availability of volunteers; whereas the second meeting presented the script that participants had to memorize for the act, and each item was read slowly in sequence after the explanation and exemplification. Volunteers asked doubts, especially regarding behaviors that they had to show when nurses did not make the consults properly; examples included tapping the feet, moving the head, frowning, and bumping the furniture, which were mentioned and explained properly. In the third meeting, the participants were introduced to the simulated environment. One by one, they walked around the room, touched the furniture and equipment and were informed about the cameras and their location. They took part in the first simulation activity, and a previously trained nurse was invited to conduct the Nursing consult. New simulations were performed in the two next meetings and, finally, an evaluative instrument was applied to validate the training – all participants showed skills to work as simulated patients.

Final considerations:
Training of a simulated patient is an efficient method to systematize scientific data collection, to obtain reliable results and to control the studied variable in a better way. It is also an efficient method to train professional skills. The benefit of using simulated patients in the professional formation and qualification increases the need of scientific strictness; therefore, literature is still incipient and should be developed to fill the lacks in the scientific field.