Enhancing Observers' Learning During Simulations

Health care facilities are charged with the challenging task of establishing and maintaining quality of nursing care. As more health care facilities adopt patient simulation as a strategy for increasing the quality of nursing care, nursing professional development specialists struggle to ensure that all participants have positive learning experiences. Staff members assigned to the role of observer pose a unique challenge because they do not actively participate and may disengage from the learning process. Instructing the observers to lead the debriefing session transforms them into active participants. The traditional method of observers learning vicariously through role modeling can be enhanced by more active involvement during debriefing. Professional role development, greater feelings of achievement, and improved clinical competence will occur with observer-led debriefing. The focus of this article is to discuss an innovative way to capture and hold the attention of those staff members assigned to the role of observer in patient simulation. J Contin Educ Nurs. 2017;48(10):454-457.