Health assessment simulation without the simulation lab

Introduction/Background/Rationale:
Health assessment is a foundational course in most nursing programs and includes collection of subjective & objective data which guides patient care provided by nurses. Nursing students in a large metropolitan health sciences center have reported witnessing very few patient assessments by nurses during clinical time, indicated discomfort with performing health assessments themselves, and verbalized confusion about the purpose of the full health assessment. The purpose of this addition of a creative teaching strategy involving "Mini-Sims" during health assessment lab is to show students the importance of the full health assessment, including the health history, the physical assessment skills of inspection, palpation, percussion, & auscultation, and the various roles within a healthcare setting that affect the health assessment.
Mini-Sim Activity:
Scenarios have been developed for each lab--three scenarios for each lab. Students are divided into groups with one faculty leading each group. That faculty then divides the group into three smaller groups and students choose one scenario to simulate. Students are given 20 minutes to plan care, including health history questions to ask, physical assessment skills to include, & are allowed to choose the participants they wish to include in the simulation, such as patient, nurse, family member, etc. Each scenario is then simulated with a debriefing after each. Students are then brought back together to document & discuss the simulations as a full lab group. This is an "on-the-fly" simulation activity.
Students have indicated their understanding of the importance of health assessments is increased by this activity.