Increasing Gerontological Content into Nurse Practitioner Curriculum through the use of Clinical Simulation

Systematically assessing nurse practitioner students using modified objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) have become a means of measuring clinical competency of students throughout the nurse practitioner program. OSCEs can be developed to measure students’ ability to communicate effectively, perform a procedure, manage a clinical case and evaluate diagnostic findings. Complex OSCEs that test the student’s competency to deliver bad news or work in an interdisciplinary team simulate real life situations faced by nurse practitioners. Challenged now to increase the gerontological content in advanced practice nursing programs, faculty should consider designing clinical simulations of common health conditions of older adults that students most likely will encounter upon graduation but may have had limited experience in the actual clinical setting. In this presentation, faculty will discuss options in designing OSCEs that include the use of human patient simulators and various anatomical clinical trainers coupled with older adult actors, to determine clinical competency in nurse practitioner students caring for older adults. Short video vignettes of OSCEs using a high fidelity human patient simulator, pelvic simulator model and the Ventriloscope will be shown. Faculty will also discuss designing telephone OSCE situations that challenge the student to triage common clinical situations in long-term care and community dwelling older adults.