1101 - Relay to Readiness: Elevating Clinical Skills from Knowledge to Application

Teaching strategies in nursing education require the movement toward more active student involvement in their learning to enhance their educational experience. Educational gaming activities are active learning tools that provide nurse educators an opportunity to impact the development of clinical judgement, critical thinking, and collaboration skills in students (Adams, et al., 2018; Kutzin, 2019). The implementation of educational gaming activities allows for reinforcement of course content material, improve clinical skill competencies, increase engagement, and permits students to receive immediate feedback from faculty (Goode, 2020; Darby, et al., 2020). In a systematic review by Missen, et al., (2016), new graduate nurses are often deficient in their ability to perform clinical skills and think critically which impacts their overall competency in nursing practice. It is imperative that nurse educators find means to enhance student learning and better prepare our next generation of nurses.

To improve retention of skill content in our medical-surgical course, a relay race utilizing a patient scenario was created to provide nursing students an opportunity to practice and demonstrate competency in clinical skills learned during laboratory days. Students were randomly assigned into two groups containing ten students. Each group was provided with the patient scenario and care tasks to complete. All tasks were focused on reinforcing critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and prioritization to provide safe nursing care. The relay activity consisted of five separate stations and students had to successfully complete one station before they could move to the next.

At the end, we surveyed our students to evaluate their perceptions of participating in the relay activity. A majority of the students found the relay activity a fun way to practice clinical skills they learned and a beneficial way to increase their ability to critically think through patient care.