Teaching Psychiatric Nursing with Interactive Simulations: Connections between Theory and Practice

Sarah P. Farrell, Nursing

1997 TTI Fellow

Project website:

Home page: http://faculty.virginia.edu/sfarrell/home2.html

A number of nursing courses combine a didactic lecture with a weekly clinical experience. Clinical case studies and laboratory-style discussions during the lecture portion of the class help prepare students for their clinical, but students immersed in the clinical experience may require information and knowledge concerning a topic that has not yet been introduced in the classroom. Since each student's clinical experience is different, having clinical case studies and laboratory exercises available in a manner that can be tailored to each student's individual needs would help correlate the classroom and clinical experiences. Professor Farrell plans to develop interactive simulations to address these needs in her course, Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing (NUCO 473). During her fellowship year, she will videotape scripted simulations of interactions typical of psychiatric nursing. Student role playing from her fall class will provide much of the needed video footage. These simulations will be digitized and incorporated into clinical modules on CD-ROM that can be accessed by the students as they are needed. The clinical modules will present students with a video of a clinical situation and allow them to choose from a variety of interventions. Each choice will lead to a video of that interaction and its result, allowing students to see the consequences of incorrect responses instead of simply telling them they are wrong. This project will provide a model for case-based video presentation that could be used in a variety of other courses in nursing and in other departments. This type of project will also be an opportunity to test various methods of delivering video over the web, which will be the eventual home of these simulations.

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