H ead’s Message Simulation as a Clinical Teaching Tool Prof Chia-Chin Lin Professor and Head “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.” Confucius I feel very blessed to have joined a School with dedicated and creative staff members who delight in taking on new challenges. One of the areas which has particularly impressed me is how our staff members have risen to the challenges surrounding the use of increasingly sophisticated patient simulators as an instructional strategy. Simulation- based clinical education provides students with a variety of experiential learning activities. These activities involve them deeply in their learning and help them to make the crucial links between theory and practice in increasingly complex patient care situations. The School has recently completed a major renovation of our clinical laboratories with three new state-of-the-art simulation wards and six new high fidelity patient simulators for these wards. The use of these complex patient simulators is now an integral part of nurses’ clinical education and our staff members are enthusiastic about being appropriately prepared to utilize this leading edge technology in ways which will most effectively enhance our students’ understanding. Our team of staff members who are passionate about simulation in clinical education have travelled overseas to visit some of best simulation facilities in the world and participated in simulation conferences. They have also completed a project using simulation activities in large class teaching to enhance students’ satisfaction and self-confidence. The project has been presented at a conference and a manuscript is now in progress. Because the new patient simulators are technologically advanced teaching tools, staff members have undertaken intensive training in their use to ensure they can operate them safely and effectively. They have also completed a number of workshops which focus on key pedagogical issues surrounding the use of simulation as a teaching strategy. There is now some evidence available which suggests that using simulation as a teaching strategy can contribute to patient safety. Students can confidently test their knowledge and skills in specific patient scenarios knowing they will bring no harm to an actual patient. The issues of safety underpin almost every nursing activity and to this end we now ensure all the patient care scenarios we develop for use in simulation training incorporate safety issues at an appropriate level for the students’ skill and knowledge acquisition. Staff members have therefore been busily constructing and updating patient care scenarios. Key skills featured in the scenarios include safety issues surrounding nurses’ competence in aspects of nursing care such as medication management, demonstration of critical thinking and clinical decision making skills and effective communication skills. We are planning a number of innovative simulation activities for our students, including training senior students as facilitators of simulation activities. As simulation training is now commonly used in hospitals we think this knowledge could be useful to them in their professional working lives. The School is taking on the challenge of embracing technologically sophisticated patient simulation as a teaching strategy which enables deep learning through involvement in real-life scenarios. Teachers and students are excited about the progress to date and we think that the patient care our students and graduates deliver in health care settings will be strengthened through the approach we are taking. N urseLetter Jul 2018 ISSUE 41 Vision to L ead Mission to Serve

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