The advantages and disadvantages of using High Fidelity Simulation as an environment to observe undergraduate nurses’ actions and their alignment with clinical judgement characteristics

Background: High Fidelity Simulation (HFS) is used as an environment for research and education into clinical judgement in nursing with positive results. Nursing actions are important aspects of clinical judgement. Observing nursing actions could provide an opportunity to identify the characteristics of clinical judgement. Therefore, the environment of HFS was chosen for this research as an observational tool. Aim: The aim of this paper is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using HFS as an environment for the research in aligning the nursing actions of undergraduate nurses to characteristics of clinical judgement. Methods: The study discussed in this paper was conducted in a simulation laboratory housing an HFS manikin within a large Australian university. The study used a descriptive research design with 18 undergraduate nurses agreeing to participate. Results: The major advantage of using HFS was that it provided a real time and safe platform to determine the nursing actions enacted which represented the characteristics of clinical judgement. The major disadvantage in our research was that only one person was available to conduct the research. It is also time consuming to both create an authentic scenario as well as preparation prior to conducting a simulation session. Conclusions: HFS provided an ideal environment to observe the actions of undergraduate student nurses and aligning these actions to the characteristics of clinical judgement. Implications: In using HFS for research the availability of participants needs to be negotiated. Individual rather than group assessment will provide clearer identification of needs of students to be developed.