Innovative teaching methods in nursing education

Nursing education has been transformed over time, with an increasing proportion of the curriculum where students spend time away from direct patient care. Although students now qualify with a stronger academic background, they are often less clinically experienced and confident than trainees from previous generations. Curricular reforms were partially introduced to reduce potential risks associated with exposing patients to students and for ethical reasons.
To remedy this, clinical skills facilities have been setup however it that it is not enough to reduce the theory/practice gap. This is where the “new” approach to simulation education comes to play. Although some of the technology has been available for decades and even longer, it is only recently that the pedagogy has dramatically changed and become more student-focused.
Simulation provides an additional step between the acquisition of basic clinical skills and their implementation in real clinical practice. It consists of enabling students to experience realistic clinical scenarios in an educational context. Sessions can be facilitated at varying degrees of fidelity/realism depending on the level of the learners and can involve actors, simulated patients, patient simulators, animal tissue, part-task trainers, virtual reality simulators, or a combination of them. High-fidelity simulation generally consists of allowing students to autonomously experience a scenario as if it was a real clinical care encounter within a realistic environment comprising all relevant cues and equipment, and whereby the tutor becomes undistinguishable from the other scenario participants. Such experiential learning opportunities are followed by a debriefing that encourages learners to reflect on various aspects of their actions during the scenarios and how they interacted with other parties.
Communities have now been formed around this very topic with annual meetings and associated peer-reviewed publications. Valid research demonstrating the transfer to real patient care and the impact on patient outcome is required.