Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
implementation and evaluation of one NMC simulated practice
learning project undertaken with a cohort of first year Diploma in
Higher Education (Dip HE) nursing students.
Background
In July 2006 the NMC, UK regulator for 682,000 nurses, midwives
and specialist public health nursing working in the UK, announced a
pilot project aimed at identifying a UK wide baseline standard for
simulated learning as part of practice learning. In order to inform
new standards for skills laboratories and other forms of simulated
learning thirteen pilot sites drawn from NMC approved universities
and HEIs in the UK were charged with the task of organising and
delivering teaching through simulation using up to seven days of
practice time taken out of current pre-registration curriculum. The
express intention was to collect data regarding what needs to be in
place to ensure simulation enhances practice learning with
particular emphasis on safe and effective practice.
Pilot Projects, were chosen to capture a broad range of simulation
approaches from those using well equipped skills facilities
replicating practice settings to those using less sophisticated
approaches using role play, commenced in September 2006 for a
period of three months and was reported to the NMC in June 2007.
The NMC are currently collating the reports and deliberating the
response, but at a feed-back session in September this year
reported that the
“Findings are overwhelmingly positive and suggest strongly
that simulated learning offers students opportunities which
are not possible in the clinical setting and helps students
achieve clinical learning outcomes” (NMC, 2007)
Methodology
The students were located in the first year Common Foundation
Programme (CFP) and as such were taught together for the first two
semesters of the course irrespective of chosen pathway of nursing,
i.e. adult, children’s, learning disability, and mental health. The
project, which commenced in semester three, consisted of an
introductory day, followed by a series of activity days in which the
cohort of 160 students were divided into mixed pathway groups. A
final group evaluation day completed the project. Each activity day
consisted of scenario-based activities utilizing patient simulators
and academic and clinical practitioners as facilitators. Experienced
patient simulators were used and all facilitators attended a
workshop designed to support the use of simulation as a learning
tool for use with nursing students. The scenarios covered aspects
of nursing care required by adults, children, clients with learning
disabilities, and clients with mental health issues. All students,
irrespective of their chosen branch of nursing would, by the end of
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