ISSN: 2146-8354 J Contemp Med Edu 2013;1(1):15-24 15 Journal of Contemporary Medical Education available at www.scopemed.org Original Research Transforming simulation in clinical education: is pre- placement hybrid learning valuable to healthcare students? Michael Harper 1 , Lesley-Jane Eales-Reynolds 2 , Christian Markham 1 1 School of Health Sciences & Social Work University of Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK 2 Kingston University, London, UK Received: November 07, 2012 Accepted: November 29, 2012 Published Online: January 05 2013 DOI: 10.5455/jcme.20121129051301 Corresponding Author: Michael Harper, School of Health Sciences & Social Work University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK mick.harper@port.ac.uk Keywords: Simulation, apprenticeship, professionalism, learning, curriculum ABSTRACT Innovation in clinical learning is reported as being useful in preparing health and social care students for clinical patient care, but historically these learners have relied on traditional pedagogies including didactic classroom learning and apprenticeship „practice‟ on live patients in a clinical environment. This paper investigates whether students find it useful to augment traditional learning methods with simulation and video (hybrid learning) as a pre-junct to learning in clinical placement. Replacing the usual initial clinical placement with a 12-week study block employing hybrid-teaching techniques reformed the traditional curriculum for Operating Department Practitioner students. An interpretative phenomenographic methodology was adopted for this study and data was collected through anonymous focus group interviews. The data support two concepts that 1) confidence and self-belief perpetuate the desire for new learning and 2) multi-professional learning develops a professional approach in terms of communication, care intervention and thinking processes. The data presented was obtained using a qualitative phenomenographic approach and the results infer specific advantages of hybrid learning to the participants to supplement traditional teaching methods by addressing theoretical limitations of learning and inequity of placement experiential learning. Limitations to this study are the absence of a control group to directly compare against apprenticeship learning methods alone and the sample group being single site, single cohort. © 2013 GESDAV INTRODUCTION Apprenticeship is an historic, popular method used to teach skills to the health and social care workforce [1]. This is mainly due to the understanding that an “expert” needs to have psychomotor skills, clinical judgment, decision-making ability and patient-centred interaction in order to communicate and treat patients [2-4]. To attain these skills, a variety of methods are employed to offer „clinical experience‟ including practicing on animals, live and/or cadaver patients and/or models [5]. Owen and Plummer [1] refer to these learners being “allowed” to practice on live patients who are in deep comas, or on the recently deceased should clinical placement allow, by following the consultant physician and attempting to emulate the master in order to attain and develop skill. Thankfully these practices are now deemed unethical unless there is no other way to obtain the training or if the patient‟s family specifically consents to such practice [6-9]. An obvious limitation to this approach to teaching medical or clinical skills (these terms are used interchangeably) is that there is a perceived risk to the patient‟s welfare physically or mentally (if alive) where the student is practicing a skill or technique and that holistic patient care cannot be at the forefront of this method of education [9]. Instead the “expert” was trained in mastering a series of skills and techniques or schema in order to have a repertoire of experience that could be used to treat a patient [1]. However, these approaches have been considered to be ineffective and/or unethical [10, 11] thus, there has been a pressing need to replace