Prepare nurses for ‘what can’t be read in textbooks’ expert at Nursing Education Conference

UK Simulation in Nursing Education Conference 2013

An internationally acclaimed health care educator says the future of simulation training should be preparing nursing students for “what can’t be read in a text book”.

Speaking at the UK Simulation in Nursing Education Conference 2013 at the University of Bedfordshire, Dr Kerry Reid-Searl called on tutors to engage health care students with simulated, realistic and believable characters so they learn to deal with patients.

Dr Reid-Searl, who is Professor and Sub Dean of Simulation in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Central Queensland University in Australia, has devised a MASK-ED programme for exactly that purpose.

Rather than using the inanimate mannikin traditionally associated with health care simulation training, the MASK-ED programme features full body silicone costumes with detailed character histories. During simulation practice sessions, these fully functioning costumes are worn by the educator who takes on the role of the patient, to acclimatise students to some of the difficulties they may face in a real life scenario.

In her keynote speech, Dr Reid-Searl said that students start to treat the simulations as real patients, engaging with each character’s needs and expectations, and that they learn the little tips in the classroom that are normally picked up on the hospital ward.

Dr Reid-Searl is currently developing an extension to the programme, with the creation of PUP-ED, a puppet based simulation programme for paediatric simulation with similar aims and objectives.The keynote speech was part of a two-day conference, hosted at the Luton campus.

The event also featured special guest speaker Professor Lesley Baillie, an acute care nurse and researcher and former Reader in Healthcare at the University of Bedfordshire. In 2012, Lesley was appointed Florence Nightingale Foundation Chair of Clinical Nursing Practice, in a joint appointment between London South Bank University and University College London Hospitals.

Conference co-organiser Jacqueline England said “Simulation training is being used more and more in health education. It is used extensively in the training we provide to future nurses here at the University of Bedfordshire.”

Jacqueline, who is a Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing at Bedfordshire, is also the East of England’s only Simulation Development Officer (SDO).