Nursing Education at Roehampton awarded £300k to expand simulated learning provision
- Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Nursing Education at the University of Roehampton has successfully bid for a grant of £300,000 from Health Education England (HEE), to expand use of simulated based learning for nursing students.
The use of simulated learning is expanding across healthcare education. Alongside other modes of teaching, access to simulated education and training allows nursing students to experience a huge range of clinical scenarios. In these immersive settings, students can practice their clinical skills in a safe learning environment, and then reflect on their work alongside their peers, service users and carers, and clinical academic staff. Simulated learning supplements and enhances learning gained during clinical placements.
The grant received will allow us to expand the use of simulated learning for our students. Virtual patient software licences will provide access to an expanding library of clinical scenarios covering a variety of settings and clinical issues across all fields of nursing. Investment in virtual reality (VR) hardware will maximise the fidelity of these scenarios and enable us to create our own. The grant will also allow for the purchasing of additional Nursing Anne simulators – highly realistic patient simulators – allowing our students to undertake patient assessments, deliver interventions, and develop technical and non-technical skills. It will also allow us to expand our Nursing Education team with new specialist staff supporting the delivery of simulated learning.
The Nursing Education team have already piloted using VR, allowing students to experience environments through the eyes of others, for example those with cognitive impairments. Additionally, all our nursing students spend a significant amount of time learning in our Clinical Simulation Suites, which can be set up to simulate patient homes, GP surgeries and fully functioning hospital wards. The expansion of simulated learning not only allows us to deliver excellent patient-centred education but has been hugely beneficial in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, when certain placements and simulated clinical scenarios with service users and role players has not always been possible or appropriate.
Paul Newcombe, Director of Nurse Education, added “this HEE grant provides a fantastic opportunity to boost the quality and volume of simulated learning for our students. I am really excited to see how this funding can help us to build on our existing reputation for innovation”.
The University of Roehampton offers an MSci in Adult and Mental Health Nursing and a BSc (Hons) in Mental Health Nursing taught at our main campus, a BSc (Hons) in Adult Nursing which we deliver at our main campus and at Croydon University Centre, and a BSC (Hons) in Children’s nursing* delivered at Croydon University Centre. We are also launching a Nursing Associate Apprenticeship*.
*Subject to validation