Application & Research of Simulation Techniques in Higher Nursing Experimental Teaching

This paper introduces the construction of network simulation experimental teaching platform of the Experimental Teaching Center of School of Nursing Jilin University, and the simulated teaching model is used in nursing experimental teaching, and discusses the superiority of the simulated experimental teaching model in cultivating clinical practice skills and comprehensive thinking ability of nursing students, and explores into simulated experimental teaching notes and the future direction.

Key words: simulation techniques; the experiment platform; practical skills; thinking ability

With the rapid development of human society, speeding up of globalization of education and continuous deepening of the reform of higher nursing education, the higher requirements have been put forward for higher nursing education talents cultivation. Nursing experimental teaching is regarded as an important part of higher nursing education system, and how to strengthen the nursing experimental teaching reform and cultivate nursing students with solid ability of clinical practice skills and comprehensive thinking ^[1], is always a hot topic of the nursing education workers.

Nursing is a practical discipline, which has a strong intuitive, practical, normative characteristics. At present, how to strengthen clinical practice skills and comprehensive thinking ability of nursing students and improve experimental teaching in nursing colleges is an important part. With the development and maturity of network technology and simulation technology, some advanced countries in the world have given simulation technology used in experimental teaching of nursing colleges, simulation teaching which simulates clinical hospital environment is paid more and more attention to. Some other colleges have gradually carried out simulated teaching in China, and has gained some successful experience. In order to adapt the needs of the nursing experimental teaching reform under the new situation, since 2006, School of Nursing Jilin University regarded higher school teaching level evaluation issued by the Ministry of Education as an opportunity, through three phases of the reconstruction projects of laboratories, has gradually completed the construction of the network simulation laboratory, that is, simulation technology is applied to nursing experimental teaching, the strong function of the laboratory comes into play, a new breakthrough in nursing experimental teaching and good results are achieved.

1. Construction of network simulation experimental center and a simulated teaching experimental platform

In recent years, with the development of the citizens’ legal consciousness and the improvement of the right-protection awareness, nursing students encountered many difficulties in the clinical training. Besides it is very difficult to carry out clinical training, and more prone to dispute between nurses and patients, especially, in the department of gynecology and obstetrics, and pediatrics ^[2]. Standardized patients (SP) are introduced into simulated teaching, to a certain extent, to solve the part of the problem, but some conditions are impossible to be simulated for standard patients, some surgical operations are not directly implemented on the standardized patients, these factors will restrict the effective implementation of the simulated teaching, and cause the serious obstacle to nursing experimental teaching, and become an main problem restricting the development of nursing education. Simulated teaching is regarded as an effective way of teaching, in order to be in line with international standards, domestic some other nursing colleges have carried out simulated teaching, but due to the factors such as the places and capital, simulated teaching is still in its popularization development stage. Therefore, how to better develop the function of comprehensive simulation patient, and set up a simulated teaching experimental platform based on Internet, is particularly important.

(1) On the original basis, the three phases of reconstruction of the experimental center have been completed successively, and set up the simulation experimental center. Advanced comprehensive simulation people and venipuncture system, etc. are bought, equipped with various cases. At the same time, taking advantage of the Jilin university campus network, the nursing experimental teaching center website is built.

(2) Construction of the simulation teaching experimental platform

Web-based simulated teaching experimental platform(WSTEP) mainly consists of the audio，video system(AVS), simulation system(SS) and the network transmission system(NTS). Its overall structure is as shown in the figure below:

1.      Audio, video system: This system is an expansion of simulation system, to complete the audio and video transmission of the simulation lab and control room.

2.      Simulation system: This system is mainly composed of control host, integrated simulation patients, professional module and the connection box. It is the core part of the experimental platform, which can mainly complete analog simulation teaching of various kinds of cases.

3.      Network transmission system: This system is also managed by the control host, which is mainly composed of switches, terminals and monitors. While students are practicing in a simulated laboratory, other students can see all their operations in the simulation laboratory in the demonstration classroom and through terminal system of the network.

4.      Platform advantages: This platform can make comprehensive patient simulator perform display more functions and improve its utilization rate; through this platform, more cases can also be added, and designs can be made according to teachers and students themselves, to make cases more lifelike, and also more flexible in the experimental teaching and examination; through this platform, students can undertake the preview before training, also can observe on scene through the network system so as to improve the successful rate of experiment.

2. Application of simulation technology in experimental teaching of nursing

After several years of exploration and practice, the simulation technology has been widely used in the experiment teaching and training programs such as basic nursing, medical nursing, surgical nursing, gynecology and obstetrics nursing, pediatric nursing, the critical rescue, health assessment, and also in the nursing skills training of postgraduates majoring in nursing professional degree, etc. When simulated experimental teaching is carried out, several jobs as followed should be mainly done:

(1) Relevant technical training to teachers

Before simulated teaching, teachers should gained the related technical training in advance, including computer application technology, utilization of integrated patient simulator, writing of cases and electronic lesson plans, etc.

(2) Preparation before class

Preparations before class are not done by a teacher himself, but completed by a teaching group, including a chief teacher, a simulation system operator, a lab assistant and students with their cooperation and meticulous preparation, of whom anyone doesn’t prepare enough will affect the teaching effect. Chief teacher will be responsible for the writing of the cases, the design of teaching process and guidance of the simulation teaching, etc.

(3) Teaching design

Instructional design is a complicated process, whose principle is to simulate the clinical environment as the main line, to cultivate the students’ clinical holistic nursing thinking ability in accordance with the requirements of nursing process, and through the simulation platform of man-machine combination advantage to cultivate students’ observation of condition and the ability to solve problems.

(4) Teaching process

In the teaching process students are always regarded as the main body, teacher’s role is to guide students’ thinking. At the same time role of students transforms, also by the transformation of the role teachers should cooperate with simulation practice of students, so as to train students’ ability to communicate with their families and cooperate with doctors. After simulated teaching is done, through the recorded playback system, both teachers and students should analyze and summarize together ^[3].

3. Effective assessment of simulated teaching in nursing experimental teaching

Through several years of experimental teaching practice, in order to provides data to improve simulation experimental teaching, 108 undergraduates of grade 2010, instructors and experts give feedback by the way of questionnaires, whose content mainly involves the teaching content, teaching organization, experimental place arrangement and scene simulation ^[4]. Most of the participants are satisfied with simulated teaching, and think that this pattern is superior to the traditional technique, which is an effective auxiliary experiment teaching model.

4. Thinking about simulation teaching

Simulation teaching is defined as a kind of teaching strategy in order to achieve the established teaching goal in the process of teaching, which makes better use of technology to create or restore the real scene of teaching content to enhance the teaching effect to improve the teaching efficiency in accordance with teaching requirements. For higher nursing experimental teaching, the following issues should be paid attention to when applying the simulation technology:

(1) Simulated teaching should focus on holistic nursing

How to make students better understand the overall nursing core idea of the “patient-centered”, through real clinical situation teaching, and combining teachers’ guide with the practice of students themselves, generally, students can quickly accept the concept of holistic nursing, and approved it.

(2) Simulated teaching should focus on nursing assessment.

Nursing assessment is the first step of nursing work, in the process of simulated teaching we more emphasis on cultivating students’ ability of comprehensive evaluation on the patients, because the modern concept of nursing thinks that implementation of nursing measures must be established on the basis of correct nursing assessment.

(3) Difficulty of simulated teaching is to design and write cases.

A successful simulation experiment teaching, how to make clinical true situation is inseparable from the cases’ design and writing of teachers; a successful case can make the simulation operating system teaching valuable. How to develop the functions of patient simulator in all aspects, and offer the true feelings to students, which is a challenge for the teachers who write cases.

(4) A teacher is the chief designer of simulated teaching.

A successful simulation experimental teaching, which requires that the teacher must have a solid theory foundation, skillful operation as well as the rich clinical experience; Every detail of operations has to need perfect design of teachers, also need to be implemented smoothly, and the two difficult tasks have to fall on the teachers. Also, teachers are required to well control the whole teaching process, otherwise, the teaching scene may be out of control.

(5) Simulated teaching is an effective way to alleviate the lack of clinical teaching resources

Clinical nursing teaching is a considerable part of nursing education, and is the key to cultivating qualified nursing talents, as well as the best way to cultivate students to analyze and solve problems, and to improve the clinical nursing skills. But the situation is that the lack of clinical teaching resources has resulted in more and more difficulties of clinical nursing teaching. But simulated teaching has the advantages such as time convenience, adjustability, no risk, repeatability, recordability, process control and so on. It can also be regarded as a good auxiliary teaching method.

(6) Problems should be noticed while adopting simulated teaching

1.      Simulated teaching is implemented according to the specific project of the nursing procedures, not all projects of nursing procedures are suitable for simulated teaching. Because the real purpose of simulated teaching is to train the students’ ability of clinical thinking, evaluation, and observation, rather than train nursing procedures. Therefore, simulated teaching should be implemented selectively. The following attention given: number should not be too much; operation time is not too long; more projects combined with clinical application should be implemented.

2.      Discussion of timely feedback, the feedback stage is the most important and the most impressive after the completion of each case simulation scene, through the video of scene simulation during, students can see their performances. When discussing every participant is active to talk, to carefully summarize the advantages and disadvantages of themselves and others, even bystanders are also required to evaluate the performance of each of the participants, the so-called “bystanders” ^[5]. Finally, the teacher should also comment on students. In this way can we gain the effect of twice the result with half the effort.

3.      Before they makes use of simulated teaching, teachers must accept previous training, especially, in aspects of writing of cases and operation of simulation experimental platform teachers should accept systematic training, and middle-aged and young teachers should be the main force of simulated teaching.

4.      Although simulated teaching has outstanding advantages, it is definitely not everything. Due to the particularity of nursing profession and the complexity of the human body, the simulation platform can not completely replace “reality” as a clinical training object, more can not completely replace clinical practice, or may enter into a teaching wrong area.

5. Conclusions

Network education technology was applied to nursing experimental teaching, changing the traditional experimental technology of higher nursing, the deep change of modern education technology and teaching methods will bring earth-shaking changes of education form and the way of learning of higher nursing in China ^[6], and at the same time it brings a new challenge to nursing teachers, how to make better use of the simulated teaching in nursing education, will be a topic to continuously explore for nursing teaching staff in the future. It is believed that by our unremitting effort, simulated teaching will continue to be developed and improved, will promote our higher nursing education towards a new stage.

References:

1.        Wang Junqiao, Hu Yan, Guo Ying etc. Exploration and practice of network-based open nursing practical technology [J]. Journal of Chinese Higher Medical Education, 2011, (8): 66.

2.        Shan Zhijun, Zheng Hao, Zhang Jinyong. Application of network teaching video system in nursing experimental teaching [J]. Journal of Nursing Science, 2006, (15): 14 to 15.

3.        Liang Wenli, Chen Qin, Yang Yunan. Application of high-end intelligent simulated teaching in pediatrics nursing practical teaching [J]. Journal of Chinese higher medical education, 2009 (4): 66.

4.        Xue Lei, Li Jianhua, Xu Miqing. Research and exploration of medical simulated technology [J]. China's Higher Medical Education. 2011, (4): 72–73.

5.        Wang Yanhua, Huang Weidong, Wang Yangli. Exploration of establishing a new system of higher nursing education experiment teaching [J]. International Journal of Nursing. 2011, (4): 579.

6.        Zhang Lanhua, Zhang Jinchi, Zhang Zhaochen etc. Practical application study of the virtual teaching system of medicine [J]. Journal of Chinese Higher Medical Education, 2012, (10): 80–81.