Welcome to Nursing EDge Unscripted Saga where we use stories to connect the past to the present and then our future as we reimagine our teaching and learning. As we celebrate the NLN Year of the Nurse Educator, we pay tribute to extraordinary nurses who've made significant contributions to nursing education. We dive into the stories of nurse educators who recognized a need, challenged traditional customs,
and influenced transformative change. Over the past six months, we focused on the contributions of educators and thoughtful innovators and scholars who played a significant role in the National League for Nursing's curriculum revolution. This occurred during the 1980s and 90s.
As a dynamic cohort of educators focused on revisioning nursing education, they opened the door to new ways to think about curriculum, dialogue, clinical judgment, the power dynamics inherent in the student-teacher relationship, and the theoretical underpinnings of clinical practice. This month we celebrate the work of Dr. Pam Jeffries who envisioned and conducted one
Designing and Implementing Models for the Innovative Use of Simulation. This study not only illuminated the first studied benefits of simulation in nursing education, it also provided a framework that guided the use of simulation teaching and learning in nursing education and then later went on to become a mid-range theory.
In our ongoing series on the NLN Curriculum Revolution are conversations that focused on what was taking shape around nursing education reform in the 80s and 90s with emphasis on direct learner application of content and more dialogue between faculty and learners. Simulation as a teaching strategy in nursing education began to find its way with early nursing education innovators in
the late 90s into the early 2000s. In 2003, with funding from Laerdal Medical, the National League for Nursing sought to identify ways in which simulation might create revolutionary learning opportunities and Dr. Jeffries was selected as the project director to conduct this first national multi-site, multi-method project. The research goals were to explore how to design and implement simulations as a teaching strategy
and evaluate the selected learning outcomes. Eight schools of nursing were selected to participate. The study was divided into four phases that extended over three years. Phase one: the research design was created, a simulation framework was designed, and data collection instruments were developed. During phase 2, simulation coordinators conducted small studies at each of their schools that informed the type of scenarios that would be implemented
in all schools in the subsequent phases. In phase three, the focus was on data collection and students were divided into three different groups. One group was high fidelity manikin use; second group a static manikin; and the third group engaged in a paper pencil case study.
Data collection elements focused on pre- and post-tests of knowledge, student satisfaction and self-confidence in learning, the use of educational best practices in simulation, and finally the design of the simulation experience itself. During phase four, students participated in either a paper pencil case study or a high fidelity simulation and all the same data was collected.
As we think about the curriculum revolution of the 80s and 90s that was driving much of the conversation on necessary transformation, simulation now was beginning to frame both how and what that transformation might look like. So let's explore the outcomes from this first study.
The first major outcome from this groundbreaking early simulation study was that the use of high fidelity simulations was determined by students to better facilitate decision-making in problem solving, was rated higher in the value of learning and at a higher level of satisfaction in learning, and that students learned and were satisfied even when they played other roles than the nurse.
Data from the Educational Practices in Simulation Scale derived from the 1987 work of Chickering and Gamson on best practices in teaching and learning in higher education revealed that simulation provides diverse ways of learning, faculty student interaction , high expectations, time on task, and active learning. This all would provide a baseline approach and beginning understanding of what constituted best practices in the use of simulation in nursing.
The second major outcome was the framework that would guide educators in the use of simulation to meet these best practices. Published in 2005, the NLN Jeffries Simulation Framework defined the necessary concepts educators needed to conduct high quality simulation. This framework later went on to become a mid-range theory in 2016, the NLN Jeffries Simulation Theory, a crucial contribution to nursing education.
This theory can now guide nurse educators as they refine explain and build on nursing education knowledge. It is an exemplar developed through theoretical thinking and testing. In 2003, no theoretical framework existed to guide nursing education and simulation. A decade later, a framework and a later theory now guide nurse educators in the design of an education strategy that incorporates the 80s education revolution concepts of best practices
in teaching and learning. Simulation was a start, perhaps, of how to operationalize an approach to transforming nursing education. While not known at the time, simulation would move forward as one of the great disruptors in nursing education with evidence to support many of the important concepts our curriculum revolutionaries were calling for.
In part two of this series, we will explore how the NLN Jeffries early simulation framework guided the first national landmark nursing education study on the use of simulation as a substitute for actual clinical encounters, further unfolding simulation as a solid nursing education disruptor to transform teaching and learning. And so the Saga continues and may our saga continue as we bring to a close this episode of Nursing EDge Unscripted Saga. Thank you for joining us