Imagine You are on Placement: Bringing Ethical Decision-Making to Life Using Simulation
Keywords:
simulation, ethics pedagogy, ethical decision-making, practice formationAbstract
A core requirement in social work education is to ensure that students are familiar with the profession’s code of ethics, can apply ethical discernment, and be ethically accountable in everyday practice. For some students, transferring learning about ethics in the safety of the classroom to real-life ethical decision-making can be challenging. In field education supervision, it is commonplace for students to report feeling ‘caught off guard’, ‘out of their depth’ or ‘ill-prepared’ when confronted with ethical issues on placement. Simulation is an effective learning environment for students to learn and practice complex and overlapping skill sets before direct practice. However, there is little guidance in the social work literature on constructing effective simulation environments to assist students in applying ethical concepts. This teaching note describes how ethical decision-making was embedded in an existing professional communication skills assessment. Students participated in a simulation with trained actors playing the role of a patient. The actors weaved in an ethical provocation to test how students would respond. The teaching team monitored student interactions via a closed-circuit video recording and, where necessary, provided real-time guidance. The recording was saved for students to reflect on and evaluate using Kolb’s learning cycle. Student feedback postsimulation was that including the ethical provocation in the scenario was instructive and beneficial. This simulation could be easily adapted for use in practice skills units of study to assist students in developing ethical competency.
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