Transferability of Mental Health Simulation Skills to Practice: A Nursing Post-Graduate Follow-Up Study

The purpose of the current descriptive qualitative follow-up study was to explore perceptions of post-graduate nurses regarding transferability of student-learned mental health simulation knowledge and skills to actual acute care practice settings. The study used a survey design of eight questions on SurveyMonkey(R) and there were 11 participants. Questions were specific to knowledge and skills learned as students in three mental health simulation labs and whether they transferred to post-graduate acute care practice settings. Thematic analysis identified the following main themes: Learned Effective De-Escalation Techniques, Felt More Prepared With Psychiatric Assessments, and Feeling Empathy for Patients Hearing Voices. Subthemes were Being Therapeutic With Patients and More Confident in Psychiatric Emergencies. Post-graduate nurses described being able to transfer use of student-learned mental health simulation knowledge and skills to acute care practice settings. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, xx(xx), xx-xx.].