Abstract

Background: Human Pathophysiology, NUR 305, is one of the most complex and difficult courses within the undergraduate, upper division nursing curriculum. NUR 305 challenges students to apply content from biology, chemistry, and anatomy and physiology to understand complex disease processes throughout the lifespan. Historically, this course has been taught purely through a lecture format with comprehension assessed through quizzes and exams. While students may "learn" course content, their performance in subsequent courses reveals that most students purely memorized information for exams as they are unable to apply and link the content when caring for actual patients in healthcare settings.

Purpose: The purpose of these educational interventions is to enhance student engagement, improve their comprehension and retention of course content, develop stronger problem-solving skills, and make connections between academic content and future professional experiences as registered nurses.

Methods: Founded upon the principles of Kolb’s (1984) Model of Experiential Learning and flipped classroom design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), NUR 305 has been redesigned to incorporate active learning strategies throughout the course, including simulation and games. Simulation has long been demonstrated to be an effective strategy to expose students to real-world patient care experiences in a safe and controlled environment (Hayden, 2010). The simulation experiences will assist students in developing stronger problem-solving skills by challenging them to apply content learned in the course to actual patients. Rather than being told the patient's diseases, students will be asked to assess the patient and to use their critical thinking skills to discuss the disease processes in the human body. Second, games are integrated throughout large class workshops and small group breakout sessions. For example, students will play the board game, Risk, to explore normal processes and diseases of the immune system, with civil wars representing autoimmune diseases and spies playing the part of HIV. Using children’s toys, small groups will build models of various cardiac diseases and share this with the class. Teams will be able to compete in sharing their knowledge and critically thinking through games such as Family Feud (using PowerPoint), Kahoot! (a cell-phone based application), and Plickers (a free software similar to clickers).

Results: The proposed simulations and game play will be integrated into coursework beginning summer 2018. Throughout all the fun and excitement, students will gain a deeper understanding of the content that carries them beyond the test. The simulations will assist students in making connections between academic experiences/knowledge and work that they will pursue in the future by simulating actual patients. Students will leave the course with a much deeper understanding of the content and ability to apply their knowledge more readily in subsequent course work.

Conclusion: Integration of simulation and games into NUR 305 is a dynamic way to engage students in their learning to develop a deeper understanding and retention of course content. Faculty members can integrate similar active learning strategies, which will be demonstrated during the presentation, into their courses.

Objectives

• Simulations are a strong way to prepare students for future real-world experiences.
• Integrating games into large class settings and small group sessions can enhance student engagement
• Different games and applications can be utilized to teach varying complex topics in a fun, interactive way

Presenters

Megan Lippe PhD, RN, UA Capstone College of Nursing
Dr. Megan Pfitzinger Lippe has been a registered nurse since 2009, and earned her BSN, MSN, and PhD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. She has taught undergraduate nursing students since 2011. Dr. Lippe's research focuses on palliative and end-of-life care education, simulation, and interprofessional education. She is a co-investigator in the ELNEC Undergraduate research team. She is a member of several nursing organizations, including STTI, HPNA, and NLN.

Ashleigh Woods Ed.D, RN, CNE, UA Capstone College of Nursing
Dr. Ashleigh Woods has been a registered nurse since 2008 and received her BSN, MSN in Case Management and EdD from the University of Alabama. Dr. Woods also has earned her certification from the National League of Nursing as a Certified Nursing Educator (CNE). Dr. Woods has clinical experience in a variety of nursing units, including labor and delivery, mother-baby, neonatal intensive care, occupational health, and cardiac critical care. Her research interests include online learning, active learning strategies, and simulation.