Operations of The Simulated Hospital Day

It’s the beginning of the semester and a clinical faculty member in an undergraduate nursing program is meeting with her clinical group for the first time.  As she looks upon her students’ faces, thoughts of clinical competence cross her mind.  What skills do these students bring with them?  Which students need extra assistance?  How have they functioned in other clinical courses?  Your hand has been dealt and it’s face down.      

      Where does a clinical instructor find this information?  Can faculty assume that students advancing from the previous semester are minimally competent?  Are past clinical records available for review?  What about a conversation with each student’s prior clinical instructor?  Can a “gut feeling” about a student be trusted?  How reliable are student self-evaluations of their clinical performance?  All these options have shortcomings.

      The Simulated Hospital Day, developed at the University of Texas at El Paso, provides a “clinical dress rehearsal” that enables faculty to observe, teach, and evaluate students as they provide nursing care during a 4-hour clinical simulation with live “patients” at the School of Nursing.  At the end of the SHD instructors have a peek at their students’ clinical abilities prior to their first clinical day in the current semester.  With a “playbook’ provided by the Simulation Staff, faculty have access to events and the rationale behind the events to optimize their student interaction.

      This presentation discusses the logistics, “tricks of the trade”, and community partner involvement during the Simulated Hospital Day.