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Modern-day health care presents unique challenges for health care providers, including highly complex patients with multiple comorbid conditions, rising health care costs, and increased provider specialization (Institute of Medicine [US] Committee on the Health Professions Education Summit et al., 2003). Increasingly, advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) are collaborating across nursing specialties to lead patient care. To provide high-quality care, APRNs must communicate effectively and understand the roles, capabilities, and strengths of their counterparts (International Nursing Association for Clinical and Simulation Learning, 2021).
Intraprofessional education is integral to APRNs learning to collaborate across specialties. By learning with and from other APRN specialties, providers have an increased ability to appreciate the knowledge and skills of other APRN roles, allowing for synergism in patient care. In critical care areas, where patients have life-threatening illnesses or injuries, this collaboration and synergy can facilitate safe, quality care to optimize patient outcomes. To ensure all APRN specialties meet minimum competence, each APRN accreditation board (e.g., Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Program) has specific standards. While these standards are unique for each APRN discipline, there are common skills and knowledge between specialties. Further, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) requires adherence to The Essentials: Competencies for Professional Nursing Education aimed at ensuring quality in nursing education, which include an entire domain addressing interprofessional partnerships (AACN, 2021).
Transitioning from bedside nurse to APRN requires an increase in responsibility and knowledge. Particularly in critical care settings, clear communication and a strong understanding of one's own professional knowledge and skills, as well as other APRN roles, will be imperative for the successful shared responsibility of caring for patients. Intraprofessional simulations in primary care settings, including telehealth, have been discussed in the literature (Boothby et al., 2019). Much less is known about the impact of intraprofessional simulations across APRN roles in acute care settings and specialties. Intentional breakdown of silos of graduate student specialties allows cross-pollination of skills and knowledge and must be meaningful and appropriate for all APRN learners.
Simulation activities provide an optimal environment for learning and collaboration across population foci and APRN clinical specialties. Our learning objectives were for students to: (1) apply and practice acute...