Nowadays, the medical field is constantly developing, and various proposals are advanced in order to improve health outcomes. One of the recent implementations regards patient education, which implies shaping the information while sharing it with a patient in accordance with his or her health behaviors for improving health status. This topic presents a matter of interest for Coleman & McLaughlin (2019). For this reason, the researchers wrote an article “Using Simulated Patients as a Learning Strategy to Support Undergraduate Nurses to Develop Patient-Teaching Skills.” This way, the purpose of this paper is to review it briefly and summarize the findings.
Patient education is extremely significant for people with long-term conditions in order to improve their self-management skills. However, a great number of nurses mark that they lack the appropriate knowledge to supply patient teaching (Coleman & McLaughlin, 2019). Therefore, the authors are determined to “formatively evaluate a simulated role-play scenario facilitated with third-year nursing students to support the development of patient-teaching skills” (Coleman & McLaughlin, 2019, p. 1301). In order to fulfill this intention, the researches stick to both high-fidelity and mid-fidelity simulation scenarios. In addition, five-item pro forma was applied for formative evaluation.
The results of the research depict the usefulness of patient education. The authors highlight that students highly appreciate motivating people to use the patient learning skills and consider them to be beneficial for the treatment and worth implementing into clinical practice. Consequently, Coleman & McLaughlin conclude “that facilitating learning with a simulated patient is useful in replicating authentic verbal and practical interactions with a patient in practice” (2019, p. 1306). This way, such a proposal is highly likely to be helpful in delivering high-quality medical services and improve the health condition of patients.
Reference
Coleman, D., & McLaughlin, D. (2019). Using simulated patients as a learning strategy to support undergraduate nurses to develop patient-teaching skills. British Journal of Nursing, 28(20), 1300-1306. Web.