Simulation Education in Nursing (Podcast)

When people think about simulation education in healthcare, they often think about using realistic manikins to practice nursing skills and medical procedures. However, simulation training encompasses much more than that.

“It’s really just simulating an experience that might happen or something that is in real life,” says Nichole Brown, PhD, MSN, RN, CHSE-A, Senior Simulation Education Specialist at Cleveland Clinic. “It’s not about the technology. It’s really not even about the location… . We have numerous types of simulation, modalities and facilities where we can achieve our learning objectives.”

In this episode of Cleveland Clinic’s Nurse Essentials podcast, Brown discusses simulation and its applications in nursing. She shares:

• A variety of techniques and tools, from manikins to virtual reality
• How simulation-based learning strengthens nursing skills
• How to use simulation to improve processes
• The importance of pre-briefs and debriefs in simulation exercises
• Advice for healthcare organizations to get started with simulation education

Click the podcast player above to listen to the episode now, or read on for a short, edited excerpt. Check out more Nurse Essentials episodes at my.clevelandclinic.org/podcasts/nurse-essentials or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast excerpt

Podcast host Carol Pehotsky, DNP, RN, NEA-BC: I know you've inspired a lot of listeners today, and some of them are saying, “I wish I could, but I don't have funding. We don't have mannequins. I don't have a space.” How do they get started?

Brown: I do think it comes back to what is the definition of simulation. And so often simulation is defined by the equipment that you have. The highest technology manikin means we have more simulation, but at the core, simulation is rooted in an experience. And you need very, very little money to have an experience.

I remember precepting nurses when I worked in the ED on IV starts. I grabbed a blue glove and some IV tubing and some tape, and I cut a chunk out of the IV tubing. I put it inside the glove, and I taped it down and said, “Start an IV.” And that was a very powerful, cheap task trainer.

However, concepts like teams, teaming, teamwork, communication – some of my favorite ways to simulate that are with gamification. There is some wonderful literature on serious games and/or gamification. At the core, it's using games to teach a topic. Period. That's the easiest way to look at it.

I had to do some interprofessional training that had been live but then had to go online. How am I going to play a game with people? And I made them do a Sudoku puzzle. Super simple. You can just Google some Sudoku puzzles, and there you go. But it's about how they work together as a team. How do you communicate? Who do you assume as the lead? All of those things can still happen.

So, if you're not sure where to start, the first thing I would say is, what are you trying to teach? What are your learning objectives? And how might you be able to do it? There are many articles talking about low-resource simulation centers, low-resource ideas. Lots of different ways to look through that, but how can you gamify it or use the equipment that you've got?