Abstract

Interprofessional teaching using a computerised patient simulator: what do students learn and how?

Author(s): Stephen Abbott, Margot Buckwell, Val Dimmock, Celia Goreham, Jeshen Lau

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study of how medical and nursing students experienced learning by enacting clinical scenarios using a computerised patient simulator. Students valued what they had learnt about team roles, communication and leadership. They also valued learning by doing, which represented a step forward from classroom learning; and in the case of medical students, from placement learning. The drama of the scenarios created engagement, anxiety and a sense of responsibility. For these reasons the sessions were regarded as more useful than previous interprofessional learning. The design of the sessions may be understood as ‘scaffolding’, to support learning in Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’; the demands placed on students were emotionally challenging but contained within the frameworks of knowledge and cognitive understanding used throughout their training.