I was at a meeting today with a couple of nurse educators and we were discussing nursing school clinicals. These ladies explained that most of the larger universities are using simulation models for clinical and lessening the clinical experience. This, I would think, would make the new graduates less knowledgeable about dealing with real, live patients. What are ya'lls opinions about this?

I agree. I know when I was in school alot was simulation and when we got to our clinicals we had 1 patient maybe 2 to care for at a time. I know now being a RN for 2 years that the best way is to be in right with the action. I currently precept new nurses and i'm glad to here that they are now getting 3-4 patients to care for each. Your never truly prepared for the "real world", but the more real life hands on you get; the better. However, I know the models we used that had the "heart sounds and lung sounds" it helped greatly for positioning your stethoscope and learning what to hear for i.e; heart murmurs, crackles, rales. So I guess what i'm trying to say is to utilize both ways but theres nothing like the real deal.

I think products like Laerdal's SimMan can be advantageous in scenario-based training and as a prep for actual pt interaction and assessment. They can, by no means, even as sophisticated as they are, be a replacement for traditional clinical experience.