NURS FPX 6112 Assessment 2 Evaluation of a Virtual Simulation Scenario
Student name
Capella University
NURS- FPX6112
Professor Name
Submission Date
NURS FPX 6112 Assessment 2 Evaluation of a Virtual Simulation Scenario
Virtual simulation technology has revolutionized students’ nursing education experiences by providing them with the opportunity to have realistic experiences, but without any risk. Sentinel U has created an evidence-based online simulation platform, specifically geared for pre-licensure nursing students to use for realistic simulations, which will focus on developing clinical reasoning and decision-making skills. For the Liza Herzog scenario, when a 27 wk pregnant patient with a history of hypothyroidism presents with fatigue, physical assessment, pharmacology, and pathophysiology skills will all be utilized in making clinical decisions for patient care. It is known that enacting the simulated environment can enhance students’ performances in that students can practice their skills in the simulated environment within a school-based training and simulate all realistic situations. This report was a summary of how effective the Liza Herzog simulation was at enhancing students’ critical-thinking skills in the three major areas of the nursing competency (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor).
What Is This Assessment About?
This assessment evaluates the effectiveness of the Sentinel U virtual simulation (Liza Herzog pregnancy case) in improving nursing students’ clinical reasoning, decision-making, and competency development across cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains.
Scenario Context
The use of simulation in nursing preparation is now a crucial part of the education of nursing professionals globally and is constantly evolving. For instance, Sentinel U has created a clinical simulation platform that enables nursing teachers and their students to experience clinical simulations through the internet as part of their nursing education. On this website, a virtual patient case of a 27-year-old female (Liza Herzog) is created, who is now 27 weeks pregnant with a diagnosis of hypothyroidism. The clinical scenario is based on real-life experiences of clinical practice, combined with the clinical guidelines (Duncan et al., 2026). Pre-licensure undergraduate nursing students have a Liza Herzog simulation created for them in an educational institution. The Liza Herzog Simulation is a program designed to provide a nursing student with a clinical learning space that is organized to provide a clinical learning experience prior to entering the profession. When using simulation, the environment is standardised, and there is the ability to repeat the experience, allowing nursing students to practice in a repeatable environment without endangering an actual patient while developing and applying clinical judgment skills. This simulation utilizes Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory and affords students opportunities to experiment and learn from their experiences by reflecting on the simulations, allowing the students to engage with patients in an immersive environment that mirrors real-life scenarios.
Physical Assessment
One aspect of education is learning how to undertake a detailed physical examination in order to enable the successful transition of students into the clinical setting of nursing. The Liza Herzog simulation incorporates a systematic process of assessment, which starts with getting the patient’s vital signs and begins by collecting a health history; the Liza Herzog simulation uses the information that was identified as important in the Liza Herzog simulation framework. In addition, the students will be able to evaluate tachycardia, pallor, and light-headedness, and will also study the same as it relates to pregnancy. The use of simulation-based training for conducting physical assessments has been shown to have a positive effect on the accuracy and confidence of students in conducting physical assessments ( Costa & Monger, 2024). Overall, the physical assessment component will give students a real-world clinical situation in which they will have excellent opportunities to build a solid understanding of the content of the course, but also to have sufficient hands-on experience to fully develop their clinical competence.
Targeted evaluation of symptoms associated with pregnancy can be achieved by simulated experiences, which can allow students to have an understanding of systems. Students who analyzed the paper on Liza Herzog, for instance, identified some subtle clues like pagophagia and tachycardia, and then linked them to iron-deficiency anemia, emphasizing the importance of clinical assessment information and improving the prioritization of information. Students can relate their observations, such as higher HR and tiredness, to the disease process. In addition, Pagophagia (craving ice) is a small but useful clinical feature of iron deficiency anemia, which is included in the simulation. The different clinical presentations that can be seen in practice will be emphasized by pagophagia and other similar presentations. These aspects of the assessment will help students identify and prioritize factors in a clinical presentation in a fast and accurate manner.
Pharmacology
Pharmacology is a comprehensive knowledge that nurses need to have to provide safe and effective nursing care to patients. The prescription given to Liza is a representation of what might be prescribed when she is given additional evidence-based findings to back up her diagnosis that Liza should receive ferrous sulfate as treatment for her iron-deficient anemia. Given Liza’s pregnancy history, her history of low hemoglobin, and her known iron deficiency, a multi-vitamin with iron is a good choice of medication for treating iron deficiency anemia in a pregnant woman. Iron supplementation by the oral route is suggested as the first line of treatment in pregnancy-associated iron deficiency anemia (IDA). The clinical choice of pharmacology in Liza is clinically appropriate and suitable for her.
In the simulation, docusate sodium has been added so as to minimize gastrointestinal problems resulting from intolerance of oral iron. Learners also need to think about intravenous iron infusion, when it is necessary (when oral therapy fails), to improve their clinical skills. The interaction between two drugs is highlighted in the scenario, such as iron and calcium. This is in line with constructivist learning theory, in which students construct their knowledge about the drugs by actively dealing with realistic patient cases instead of merely absorbing information (Khurshid et al., 2023). Simulations that allow for adverse effect management using pharmacotherapy increase the learner’s ability to deal with the real patient. All of these will help learners build a comprehensive and practical background of the use of iron therapy during pregnancy.
Pathophysiology
For quality patient care and making good decisions for patients, one needs to have a good understanding of disease processes. The simulation is a good representation of the pathophysiology of iron-deficiency anemia in high-risk pregnancy. The mother’s anemia is due to her history of pregnancy (7 pregnancies), diet, and her not having a well-functioning thyroid. Anemia in pregnancy is due to the increased fetal requirement for iron—basically, the total requirement for normal fetal development—exceeds the amount the woman has stored in her body, and she is not getting enough iron in her diet. This situation may be useful to help illustrate how an individual may present with a clinical problem, as multiple physiologic factors may be present.
The simulation takes the user through a disease process from the time the patient first exhibits signs of a disease to how the lab results are interpreted and a treatment is established. This allows students to grasp how a reduction in the number of red blood cells results in symptoms of tiredness, palpitations, ‘low iron,’ etc., and laboratory results (e.g., low hemoglobin, low hematocrit, low serum ferritin, low iron) are accurately reflected in the simulation. The value of the simulation educationally will be facilitated if lab data are used along with pathophysiological processes in order to accurately diagnose the disease process from a clinical perspective; this will improve nursing students’ capacity to reason clinically.
Integration
All 3 aspects of nursing (assessment, pharmacology, and pathophysiology) need to be successfully integrated for nursing students to have a successful learning experience. The Liza Herzog simulation does this by associating the different clinical cues with a physiological mechanism. For instance, once the tachycardia is physically detected, immediate diagnostic testing is recommended, and finally, diagnostic treatment – medically based intervention (medication) is recommended. As a result of an integrated learning design, students will be able to think more about how to conduct clinical reasoning, rather than having fragmentary, domain-specific clinical knowledge, therefore providing evidence in the literature of the effectiveness of simulation-based learning with a coherent design in education.
During a physical examination of a patient named Liza Herzog, the students find her to be pale, tired, and have a craving for ice licks, then they discuss the pathophysiology of decreased red blood cell production and come to the conclusion that ferrous sulfate is a good choice for a pharmacological treatment. This series of reasoning processes is like the clinical processes of a real clinical setting that occur every day in nursing practice. The interweaving of the three domains of learning in one scenario is similar to the complexity of the patient scenarios in healthcare practice in real life (Mallick & Dalia, 2025). All the simulation experiences are designed together; therefore, evidence of competence and confidence exists with the nursing graduate.
General Observations
The overall design and user-friendliness of the entire SentinelU platform allow students to have a positive experience while learning. The assessment then leads into a section of treatment planning in each of the sections, which is also clearly defined with a logical flow of information. It took about 1 hour and 12 minutes to go through the scenario, allowing ample time for a clinical case. The comments/replies that followed each open-ended response section were detailed, specific, and educationally supportive. During all the simulations, there were no significant technical problems, and consequently, the simulation platform itself was very reliable throughout the simulations.
All instructions were very clear, with each part of the application making it very easy to navigate for students and almost without confusion through the program. Moving from one section to another (from vitals to inquiry, diagnostics, and plan of care) was easy and did not require a lot of technical ability. With its web-based approach and support for the majority of hardware and software components, even with limited requirements (practically only an Internet connection and an updated web browser), use of the program was very easy for all the students. There was not enough detail and clarity in the instructions of the review of systems (R.O.S.) portion of the application (Khurshid et al., 2023). For this simulation, students who answered the Review of Systems section scored as if they did not complete anything on their first try; i.e., they have a score of zero for the section. By correcting these deficiencies, Sentinel U will better serve its intended purpose as a useful tool in the education of the nursing profession.
Key Takeaways
- Virtual simulation improves nursing clinical reasoning and decision-making skills.
- Sentinel U provides realistic, safe patient scenarios for pre-licensure students.
- The Liza Herzog case focuses on pregnancy-related iron-deficiency anemia.
- Simulation integrates assessment, pharmacology, and pathophysiology learning.
- Feedback-based learning improves student confidence and performance.
Recommendation
An important finding of the evaluation is to include Sentinel U into the pre-licensure nursing program—it has been proven to be effective in developing a student’s clinical reasoning and decision-making process. The Sentinel U platform is based on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory, which suggests that an experiential approach and reflection on the work are crucial for the creation of meaningful learning. Students also get personal and instant feedback after each section, which enables them to reflectively observe or actively conceptualise Kolbs cycle.
The second recommendation is to use Sentinel U to model ‘real-life’ patient scenarios that will engage advanced nursing students in thinking about advanced clinical care situations. Numerous peer-reviewed research articles have shown that, hands-on, utilizing simulation-enhanced learning positively impacts an individual’s clinical competence, critical thinking, and confidence in their nursing education, no matter the educational level of the individual. Creating “scenarios” that test students’ critical thinking and assessment skills for more complicated patient cases will help them engage more fully with the unknowable variability of real-life clinical practice and better prepare them for more complex cases in their later clinical training. The use of simulation-based education has been proven to enhance the clinician’s clinical reasoning ability and the clinician’s understanding of patient care outcomes. Through the successful use of multiple patient cases and the expansion of the use of simulation to all nursing program courses, students will be able to expand on and apply assessment, pharmacology, and pathophysiology.
The third recommendation is for Sentinel U to make changes in instructional design to address the gaps identified before it can fully implement the platform. To ensure that the most compelling elements of Sentinel U’s students’ learning are optimized, Sentinel U will collaborate with the nursing faculty to reword unclear parts and create models to guide the parts in which students are underperforming. Constructivist learning theory, on the other hand, has shown that effective scaffolding (clearly ordered and coherent content) in the process of teaching and learning is important to students’ construction of knowledge, and hence, if students’ learning tasks are clearly structured with a coherent context in the learning process, the student will be able to master the content most effectively. These gaps will be addressed and will enable Sentinel U to be a high-quality educational tool in the nursing education program.
Conclusion
Sentinel U Liza Herzog is a simulation intended to convey the benefits of simulations, the educational importance & validity of simulations, and integration of nursing across many disciplines into an appropriate format of a nursing simulation. The amount and detail of feedback, along with alignment of AACN competencies & NCLEX categories, significantly increase the educational value of these simulations. Recommendations to strengthen the value of these simulations include: A comprehensive review of systems should be completed for the students, and training them to answer questions by creating an answer. Ultimately, Nursing Education’s future should have an emphasis on the use of simulation technology in nursing education as a crucial component of nursing education.
References For NURS FPX 6112 Assessment 2
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Benson, A. E., Lo, J. O., & Caughey, A. B. (2024). Iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia during pregnancy—Opportunities to optimize perinatal health and health equity. JAMA Network Open, 7(8), e2429151. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.29151
Costa, L. A., & Monger, E. J. (2024). Criteria to evaluate graduate nurse proficiencies in obtaining a health history and performing physical assessment in simulation-based education: A narrative review. Nurse Education in Practice, 77, e103984. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2024.103984
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FAQs
What is Sentinel U in nursing education?
Sentinel U is a virtual simulation platform designed to improve clinical reasoning and decision-making in nursing students.
What is the Liza Herzog simulation?
It is a pregnancy case scenario focusing on iron-deficiency anemia used for clinical learning.
How does simulation improve nursing skills?
It improves assessment skills, pharmacological knowledge, and clinical judgment through real-life scenarios.