Promoting Caring by Increasing Realism in the Simulated Environment

High-fidelity human patient simulators provide students learning opportunities for performing skills, attaining knowledge, critical thinking, and building self-confidence. Absent from this list is the essential component of learning caring in nursing. Simulation-based learning can present a challenge to students learning caring behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to address strategies helpful in creating realistic high-fidelity simulation-based learning experiences promoting learning caring during simulation. Simulation specialists who create a realistic clinical scenario and add the human component to the simulated experience were found to make the simulated environment more realistic and consequently more conducive to learning caring behaviors.