Implementation of Simulation: A Contemporary Strategy to Enhance Clinical Skills of Undergraduate Students in Mental Health Nursing.

Implementation of Simulation: A Contemporary Strategy to Enhance Clinical Skills of Undergraduate Students in Mental Health Nursing. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2020 May 06;:1-5 Authors: Farooq S, Tharani A, Begum S, Parpio Y Abstract Simulation is an innovative teaching strategy that supports student centered learning. It improves therapeutic communication skills with clients. Additionally, it enhances critical thinking, problem solving, and confidence among students, in a non-threatening and safe environment, without posing a risk to actual patients. This paper describes the process of application of simulation for undergraduate nursing students enrolled in a mental health nursing course. The project aimed to determine the significance of simulation to improve the communication skills and confidence level, and to decrease the anxiety of undergraduate nursing students, prior to attending mental health clinical. The Experiential Learning (ELT), by Kolb in 1984, was chosen as a framework for the simulation strategy. The simulation experience was a stepwise process that comprised a briefing session with students to explain them the process and purpose of the simulation activity, followed by a two-day simulation experience. The experience comprised students' interaction with Simulated Patients (SP), who had been prepared to manifest symptoms of depression, mania, and schizophrenia. The later part of the experience was a debriefing session,...
Source: Issues in Mental Health Nursing - Category: Nursing Tags: Issues Ment Health Nurs Source Type: research