The Simulation Highway: Getting Faculty “on the Road” to Student Engagement

Advanced practice registered nursing (APRN) faculty in distance education programs are challenged to maintain student engagement in light of the expansion of student enrollment and a growing shortage of clinical preceptors (Barker & Pittman, 2010; Brooks & Niederhouser, 2010). Acknowledging the benefits of interactive simulation for education in nursing (Elfrink, Nininger, Rohig, & Lee, 2009; Wayne & Lotz, 2013), a team of distance education faculty at a state university in Texas collaborated about methods to actively engage students in a recent offering of an online advanced health assessment clinical course. As part of a clinical course evaluation, students traveled to campus to actively participate in an evaluative clinical learning experience known as the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). During this experience, a consecutive on-campus day was developed to promote active student learning and engagement. On this interactive day, the APRN faculty team utilized case studies specifically developed to promote attainment of course objectives and enhanced clinical reasoning. Students collaborated in faculty-guided, small group rotations during simulated clinical case studies with standardized patients to promote provider skill development and meet student learning outcomes for the course. This interactive day was combined with a separate evaluative day which utilized the OSCE to evaluate individualized student clinical performance with patient communication, history taking, and physical assessment skills with beginning differential diagnosis development. Student and course faculty feedback elicited after both group and individual experiences yielded rich, constructive perspectives for further course and program considerations regarding student engagement.  This presentation will discuss the strategies, successes, and challenges of the implementation of the interactive learning day and the evaluative OSCE day for an advanced health assessment course.