Human simulation in emergency nursing education: current status.

摘要

At the ENA Scientific Assembly in 1999, Patricia Morton presented a poster entitled "Development and Implementation of a Patient Simulation Laboratory for Teaching Emergency Nursing." Morton's poster outlined the following recommendations for use of simulation laboratories for teaching emergency nurses: Increased use of simulation as a teaching method for students; Formation of partnerships between clinical settings and schools of nursing for the purpose of sharing the resources of a simulation laboratory for learning; Increased use of simulation as a method to validate nursing competencies; and Research to investigate the outcomes of simulation as a teaching method. Morton's recommendations remain relevant in 2006 for emergency nursing and beyond. Whereas the use of simulation as a teaching method has certainly increased, its use is confined largely to areas with ease of access to simulation resources. Although costs of simulators have decreased markedly, smaller hospitals are hard pressed to justify the cost of high-fidelity human simulators, such as SimMan (Laerdal, Wappingers Falls, NY), which cost approximately dollar30,000 each. Depending on the degree of fidelity desired to reproduce aspects of human physiology, human simulators can cost as much as dollar150,000. Although their potential value in preventing adverse outcomes and improving patient safety is discussed extensively in the literature, ' hard data to support their use, and the costs entailed, is still forthcoming.