Kamryn Compton

Simulation Experience Reflection 3/19/21

I really enjoyed this simulation experience! Prior to the simulation experience I felt nervous not knowing what to expect. I was not sure that I was comfortable talking to patients about potential mental health related problems because it is something I have never done before. I was expecting the patients to present with more extreme cases of mental illness. For example, I was expecting one the of the patients to cry or have an anxiety attack in the room while talking to us or for the suicidal patient to be a little bit more exaggerated and have more of an extensive plan regarding their suicide. I was surprised at how open and willing to talk all of our patients were, or at least they were by the end of the conversation.

I was not anticipating being thrown into the simulations as fast as we were when we first got there because of the strict time schedule, but I began to feel comfortable fairly quickly. I enjoyed working as a group and I overall felt my group worked together really well and our conversations began to flow. We were all able to participate during the simulation and ask questions during the debrief time. Sometimes during our conversations, we ran out of time to ask everything we wanted to discuss or teach but I felt that overall, we did extremely well touching on all of the major areas that were most critical concerning out patients. Though I really enjoyed working in a group, I feel more confident that I could perform these skills on my own and like I have somewhat come up with a method that I feel would work well for me in terms of ordering of questions and beginning the interviewing process. 

 It was definitely a new and unique experience to work with actors, it felt like I was talking with an actual patient which in a way felt like it made it easier, because we truly got to know this person for the first time. I feel like through this experience I learned a lot about therapeutic communication, specifically how to build rapport with a patient to help facilitate those deeper conversations. Often my group kind of jumped right into the interview because of the limited time but I felt like I learned a lot about how to slow it down and take those few extra minutes to really get to know my patient, their history, and provided adequate reassurance to make them more comfortable with me. I learned how to consider my patients diagnosis and use that as a guide for some things that I may and may not want to discuss with that particular patient, such as a lot of the more rare and scary medication side effects with a patient with anxiety. Sometimes it might be better to limit the things that I discuss with my patient as a nurse to help them to remain calm and in some cases agreeable to treatment and let the admission team or the doctor do some of the more serious teaching. I was able to talk to the patient, and a mental health nurse and I learned some tips and tricks to help me going forward.

I was able to learn a lot from my professor, my peers, as well as the patients. During the debrief the patients also offered a lot of helpful feedback of ways that we could have improved to make them feel a little bit more comfortable or cared for. It was a very educational experience, and I really enjoyed being able to see the mental health exam and other interviewing techniques performed in real life and to begin to practice some of these more difficult skills. Although it was a little intimidating, I feel like I am definitely much more comfortable with addressing some of these topics in the clinical setting. I had my mental health observation day following the simulation and felt that I was able to take some of the skills I learned and apply it while talking to my patients while I was there, which was a cool experience. I learned a lot during simulation and I look forward to being able to use my newly learned skills in my practice as a nurse.