Situated Cognition: Its Relationship to Simulation in Nursing Education

Health care settings have dramatically evolved into highly complex technical practice environments that demand high competency levels for nurses. As such, many educators are struggling to integrate strategies that will help to ensure a competent workforce. A challenge faced by nurse educators is the implementation of teaching strategies that promote the clinical competency of learners while strengthening their clinical reasoning and reflective-thinking skills. For use in nursing education, standardized, reproducible, clinically accurate simulated patient care experiences can be developed to help provide students with the opportunity to identify common patient problems and demonstrate appropriate interventions. Situated cognition (also known as situated learning) is a learning theory that is based on the premise that learning is influenced by the situation in which it occurs. This article addresses the relationship of situated cognition to the use of simulation in nursing education.