A framework for simulated practice in nurse education

In November 2023, I attended the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH) conference in Brighton, focused on sustainable development and succession planning in healthcare simulation services. Key seminars and workshops included the strategic analysis of service and learning needs, thoughtful training planning, and investing in resources.

The ASPiH Standards 2023 (ASPiH, 2023) present a comprehensive framework for integrating simulation in healthcare education. This is particularly relevant for nursing, where the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2023) supports up to 600 hours of simulated learning within the 2300 practice hours required in the nursing curriculum.

This type of learning provides students with realistic and supervised experiences, helping them achieve programme outcomes and develop proficiency standards. Quality assurance of simulated practice learning is vital, and should involve feedback from students and stakeholders. It is important that simulated practice is contextualised and supervised, reflecting real-life interactions, rather than being limited to activities such as clinical skills training or watching videos. Simulated practice, designed to be as realistic as possible, complements actual practice learning by allowing students to encounter many common scenarios, overseen by practice supervisors.