Does final year student teaching on a patient simulator improve first year nurses’ confidence and abilities?

CPS can be likened to the use of flight simulators in the aviation industry. Devita et al (2005) describe CPS as being a life-size mannequin linked to a computer which allows one to interact with it just like you would with another human being.  They detail how one can listen to heart and lung sounds, by placing a stethoscope on the mannequin’s chest and how the device can be programmed to produce a variety of sounds e.g. murmurs. Ravert (2002) describes how CPS uses pneumatics to make the chest move, produce cardiac traces, allow the students to administer simulated medications and observe the effects on the patient’s physiology. Furthermore, a variety of patient profiles can be used.  CPS is used to train medical, nursing and other health professionals (including students); facilitating this multidisciplinary team to work together to manage a patient scenario. Student nurses and medical students can use CPS to manage such medical scenarios as cardiac arrest and can refer to senior staff (qualified doctors and nurses), who are on hand. The participants in this study took part in such scenarios in their final year of nurse training.

It seems that there is some controversy in the literature surrounding the benefits of CPS for future clinical practice e.g. Alinier et al (2006) describes a student who recalled relying on their CPS training to deal with real emergencies in practice.  However, other studies have not shown such benefits.

The value of the present study is that it examines nursing students one year post –qualification and uses a focus groups to ask if final year student teaching on a computerised patient simulator improves first year nurses’ confidence and abilities? There are few studies in the literature that attempt to establish if CPS training translates into future clinical competence.

In conclusion, it seems that there are a lot of self-reports from the participants in the present study to show that the confidence and abilities e.g. interprofessional working, taking responsibility for patients, assessing patients etc. of first year nurses who took part in CPS training in their final year of nurse training did indeed improve and that the participants link this to the CPS training.  Furthermore, many of these self-reports back up evidence from the literature in this area but there were few examples given of situations where participants could clearly highlight that CPS had enhanced their practice.  The reasons for this have been discussed and may include the time delay in gathering evidence which may have lead the participants to forget how they had learnt various skills.  So, the research question has not been fully answered.