The Future of Education

Nursing education is a practical training system should be integrated with theoretical knowledge and clinical practice. In this process, it is proposed that professional knowledge is given to students and reflected to their behaviours, help to develop themselves, provide to communicate effectively with healthy/ill person, family and society, other professional members and friends.  For this purpose, simulation is an effective means to accomplish this goal. Embedded Simulated Persons (ESPs) and Virtual Humans (VHs) are powerful educational tools to acquire and maintain especially affective skills in healthcare education and training. However, educators need to have resources such as suitable personnel, facilities, budget, etc. for implementing these methods. To select the appropriate method(s), instructors and course designers also need to know their advantages and limitations. To facilitate that goal, It is conducted a literature survey on use, cost, and advantages/limitations of VHs and ESPs as teaching tools in health education programs. In this context, the aim of this study was to (1) describe and compare the use of VHs and ESPs in the simulation in nursing literature, and (2) provide a basis for planning training with ESP and VH. It was found that VHs have some advantages over ESPs. There are important barriers (cost, space, human factors, versatility etc.) that need to be addressed ESPs use in healthcare education and training. On the other hand, VHs, who are programmed, and always give the same reaction and similar experiences without any fatigue or forgetting lines (Chuah, 2013) and can always provide consistent feedback by analyzing the event logs, can simulate and present any roles (pediatrics, physician, a prostate exam, eye movement disorders, etc.) and characters (physical deformities, accent, skin, etc.), can serve as role models by guaranteed everyone sees the same best practices model, can be used on demand team trainings, are ready 24/7 for using.

Keywords: Pediatric nursing, Simulation, Standardized patient;