Supporting development of cultural humility in nursing care of gender diverse individuals: Creating an educational toolkit with virtual simulation games

Background: Education is needed for nurses and nursing students to learn about and apply the concepts of cultural safety and cultural humility to meet the unique health care needs of gender diverse individuals. We created a novel educational toolkit focused on a series of four virtual simulation games that allow learners to experience clinical encounters with gender diverse individuals facing challenges in the healthcare setting.

Objective: To showcase four virtual simulation games and a website with curated resources to support Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity education for nurses and nursing students.

Methods: We partnered with three graduate students who were also LGBTQI2S subject matter experts to develop relevant and authentic educational tools to support sexual orientation and gender identity education for nurses and nursing students. Four writing teams were formed to develop the learning outcomes, assessment rubrics, decision point maps, and filming scripts. We also created a new platform to house the four VSGs, and integrated learning outcomes assessment rubrics into the VSGs to support self-regulated learning by users of the resources. In addition to receiving feedback during game play about their decision-making, learners are also directed to key resources for remediation.

Results: Learners and instructors who tested the games and website components of the educational toolkit found them to be easy to use, engaging and contributed to their learning.

Conclusions: We demonstrated feasibility and acceptability of delivering online education on sexual orientation and gender identity nursing using a series of virtual simulation games and a website with curated resources.