Evidenced-based educational practices propose simulation as a valuable teaching and learning strategy to promote situated cognition and clinical reasoning to teach nursing students how to solve problems. A project that uses a structured debriefing activity, the Outcome Present State-Test Model of clinical reasoning following high fidelity patient simulation, is described in this paper. The results of this project challenge faculty to create and manage patient simulation scenarios that coordinate with didactic content and clinical experiences to direct student learning for the best reinforcement of clinical reasoning outcomes. Considerations for the future include incorporating patient simulation activities as part of student evaluation and curriculum development. The arguments for using high fidelity patient simulation in the current educational environment has obvious short term benefits, however, the long term benefit of developing clinical expertise remains to be discovered.

The NVS takes about three minutes to administer and the assessment is easily accomplished during the initial visit for each patient. Healthcare providers will then be aware of the health literacy level of each patient and base their communication appropriately.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between hope, social support, uncertainty in illness, and spirituality and their effect on the perceived health of HIV seropositive men. A prospective design was used to test a causal model on a sample of 125 HIV seropositive men recruited from urban HIV/AIDS outpatient clinics. A goodness of fit index of .90 and a comparative fit index of .79 indicated minimal fit of the theorized model with the data. Findings revealed significant, positive paths from hope to perceived health and from spirituality to hope. Significant negative paths were found between social support and uncertainty in illness and uncertainty in illness and hope. The level of hope may play an important role in enhancing health of HIV seropositive men.