Geriatric Simulation: Practicing Management and Leadership in Care of the Older Adult

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Key points

  • Nurse educators are currently challenged to prepare nursing students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to provide care to a vastly growing population of older adults.

  • Multiple factors contributed to the creation of a nursing clinical simulation (NCS) focused on the care of the older adult, including increased nursing student enrollment making appropriate student clinical placement sites more difficult to obtain, a deficit of nurse faculty specializing in geriatrics, and an

Background of geriatric management and leadership nursing clinical simulation

Simulation, still in its infancy and becoming increasingly utilized in nursing education, is documented to promote teamwork, provide practice crisis resource management, and assist in the understanding of roles and responsibilities, decision-making, and communication.6 Scant research exists on the use of NCS in assisting nursing students to learn the necessary skills of management and leadership in the clinical setting. Guhde7 and Reed and colleagues8 describe NCSs with a focus on leadership

Geriatric management and leadership nursing clinical simulation

The geriatric management and leadership NCS was created by faculty with expertise in simulation, debriefing, and geriatric nursing. Faculty with expertise in medical and surgical nursing, leadership, and management were asked to review content for accuracy and offer suggestions. This NCS was used to augment clinical hours for the final practicum of senior level baccalaureate students in an accelerated nursing program. Three hours were allocated for groups of 6 students to perform the NCS. Three

Lessons learned

This simulation has been conducted for 4 consecutive years and several revisions have occurred based on faculty observation, and faculty and student feedback. Revisions have included a brief discussion at the beginning of the simulation to prepare students for professional telephone communication on a hospital unit, a skill rarely practiced during the hospital clinical experiences. A universal health care template, Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation (SBAR), is used to provide

Summary

Although this simulation was conducted for senior Bachelor of Science in Nursing students, the patient cases and scenarios are easily adaptable for various levels of students. The patient and faculty interactions can be made as simple or complex as desired, tailoring the NCS to the particular level of the student. Nurse practitioner students can be added to the NCS to portray the role of health care provider and can serve as a valuable collaborative effort between various educational levels of

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