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Purpose: This session will describe an adult critical care course which integrates human patient simulation and focuses on scenario-based learning. The course focuses on skill and competency acquisition, critical thinking skills, human factors and patient safety through simulated experiences. This session will also address the benefits and challenges of utilizing human patient simulation as an educational strategy. Methods: This critical care program was specifically developed to enhance and enrich traditional learning experiences for graduate nurses or experienced nurses transitioning to critical care. The program provides a series of systematic, planned clinical and simulated experiences. By providing patient care scenarios relevant to the actual patient population, nurses learn skills and gain experience in a planned and prescribed manner. Use of simulation assists in the development of necessary competencies without the fear of harming a real patient or waiting until a learner obtains the clinical experience in an otherwise unpredictable fashion. Results: Human simulators support an instructor's ability to individualize learning experiences based on the learners' needs. It also provides opportunities to replicate clinical scenarios in which learners must make clinical decisions in near-to-real situations. Learners can practice tasks and processes in lifelike circumstances and therefore, when they encounter a crisis similar to a simulated scenario, they are able to respond more effectively. It also offers the opportunity to develop and evaluate team-building, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills. Conclusions and Implications: The use of human patient simulation promises to yield significant improvement in the development of nurse competencies from beginner to expert. Clinicians have the opportunity to learn from increasingly complex situations as well pre-programmed rare events and repetition of cases and experiences. Furthermore, different outcomes of a situation can be demonstrated depending on the actions chosen; and the setting can be used to practice teamwork, and debriefing and team interactions