Nursing students visit the simulation center once during each clinical rotation, where they are paired off and must care for a simulated patient while instructors and other students observe. The program encourages nursing students to share ideas, set priorities and make clinical decisions about patient care together.
In traditional nursing simulation methods, individual nursing duties are distributed among multiple students. However, this strategy does not prepare students to handle actual nursing workloads.
“We came up with this idea — ‘Two Heads Are Better Than One’ — because we wanted our students to have a more realistic experience in simulation, but not overwhelm them by asking them to work alone. Having the two students act as one nurse forces them to stick together and prioritize,” Jeanne Carey, RN, certified healthcare simulation educator and director of simulation at Baylor’s nursing school, said in a press release.
Ms. Carey said the program’s effect on student learning exceeded expectations and received “overwhelmingly positive” post-evaluation survey responses from students and educators. Students said they felt less anxiety and more confidence with a peer by their side. Educators said they saw more robust debriefing sessions after using the pairing method for simulation sessions.
Baylor researchers published their findings about the program Nov. 5 in the Journal of Nursing Education.
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