Nursing students’ experiences with clinical communication using a virtual program.

• Main Author: Samwel, Shelley
• Other Authors: Hills, Marcia
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: ESL; Clinical Nursing; Communication; Virtual Simulation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/7732

The accrediting and nursing organizations are promoting patient safety and well-being by emphasizing clinical language proficiency. This presents a challenge for English as second language (ESL) nursing students in learning language skills for the clinical environment. This study explicates the experiences and reflections from nursing students, who are not native English speakers that used a virtual simulation program called vSim in relation to clinical language skills. Five students participated in this study. A qualitative study utilizing hermeneutic phenomenological methodology was used to collect experiential data and then was interpreted according to Van Manen’s (1990) data analysis method. Themes of confidence, patient safety, knowledge transfer from classroom to clinical, communication within the clinical environment, and acquisition of language skills emerged from the interviews and reflective journals. This research study shows that the use of a non -immersive virtual simulation provides a positive contribution to ESL nursing students’ experiences with clinical language skills and can provide nursing educators another teaching strategy to assist ESL nursing students achieve clinical language competency. === Graduate === 0569 === [e-mail]