Using Clinical Reasoning and Simulation based education to flip the enrolled nursing curriculum

Background: Objective: To address the tensions between needs of newly qualified nurses and the realities of busy and every changing workplace the Health Education and Research Centre (HERC) is developing a quality and targeted training program to appropriately prepare these future enrolled nurses to the standards that the workplace requires. Through innovative curriculum design and delivery methods‟ using the structure of the “flipped classroom”, this pedagogical approach is to be embedded throughout the whole curricula. This program will use the Clinical Reasoning Cycle as its theoretical framework and simulated based education as the primary mode of delivery.

Primary Argument: More than ever before graduate Enrolled Nurses are expected to, hit the ground running‟ with a higher skill mix than previously seen in the health care sector. Innovation in curriculum design at HERC is being driven by the changing political, economic, educational and cultural landscape within which the health sector operates. Health Workforce Australia is predicting a significant nursing shortage due to poor retention rates, aging health workforce, and health and political trends. The aged care nursing sector represented by the Enrolled Nurse workforce has been identified to be at particular risk.

Setting: Vocational Education

Methods: All students who are enrolled in the 2015 Diploma of Nursing Course will engage in a new pedagogical approach to a nursing discipline where simulation is not just an add on to a range of teaching and learning modalities, but becomes the substantive forum for learning. Students will prepare outside of class time which then allows face to face time to be productive and engaging where knowledge can be constructed and students will be better prepared for the industry requirements of them once graduated. This curriculum approach has been structured from the pedagogy of the “Flipped Classroom”

Findings: A rigorous longitudinal evaluation system will be implemented to gage if this approach to teaching and learning does in fact have advantages over the current modalities used in current nursing curriculums.

Conclusions: By flipping the curriculum it is expected students will gain an understanding of critical thinking with rationale for the nursing interventions using the cycle as a framework to rationalize and implement care and have the ability to evaluate the impact and outcomes for patients.