A new initiative by King’s to expand placement opportunities
Expanding placement opportunities is a key national strategic priority, aligning with the Government's goal to significantly grow the nursing workforce by 2036. Achieving this growth in placement capacity amidst ongoing disruptions to clinical and educational services presents both challenges and opportunities. In response to these national challenges, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has revised its standards, allowing Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to incorporate a portion of practice learning through simulated practice. These standards require HEIs to integrate technology and simulation effectively and proportionately across the curriculum to enhance supervision, learning, and assessment.
As a response, the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at King’s has created a bespoke virtual placement. This solution delivers more than 10,000 hours of simulated practice learning to first- and second-year nursing students since its launch in July 2024.
The King’s simulated virtual placement provides students with a valuable opportunity to engage in digital health, offering a learning experience that mirrors the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape. It enables students to develop key skills in telehealth, digital health and virtual care. Aligned with the 2018 NMC Future Nurse Proficiencies and grounded in simulation pedagogy, the placement is supported by academic staff and clinical teachers to ensure compliance with Standards for Student Supervision and Assessment. Aby Mitchell, Senior Lecturer and Behnam Jafari Salim, Digital Learning Specialist, have both been nominated for a British Journal of Nursing Award 2025 for their work on virtual placements.
This bespoke virtual placement offers King's nursing students a dynamic opportunity to engage with a variety of digital simulation modalities. Unlike other virtual placements that rely solely on digital simulation tools, this initiative integrates different patient modalities within a narrative-driven approach, delivering a more dynamic learning experience. Students gain confidence in making referrals to a multi-disciplinary team and utilising an interactive electronic health record system, enhancing their digital and clinical competencies. These modalities provide a personalised learning experience, ensuring that students can acquire the necessary competencies at their own pace and learn and develop through each interaction.
Co-designed with nursing students, clinical teachers, services users and leveraging digital technology, this bespoke digital solution recreates a hypothetical GP surgery on King's Road with a caseload of 24 primary care patients. This solution seamlessly integrates both external and internal simulation tools and strategies, including AI, live one-to-one patient interaction and virtual 360 scenarios amongst other virtual simulation modalities to deliver diverse patient experiences. In the virtual placement, nursing students can engage in a problem-solving approach to patient care, where solutions and intervention methods are not always immediately apparent. This fosters the development of critical thinking skills, encouraging students to continuously monitor patient progress, adapt their approach, and interact dynamically with both virtual patients and the simulated environment.