Nurses communicate at the center of patient care.
They listen to patients, educate families, clarify instructions, coordinate with clinicians, notice changes and speak up when something is wrong. These conversations often happen while the nurse, patient and family are experiencing significant pressure.
Yes And Innovations develops actor-supported nursing simulations that help students practice patient, family and interprofessional communication in realistic situations.
Programs are customized in partnership with qualified nursing faculty and simulation professionals.
Schedule a Nursing Simulation Strategy Call →
Communication Skills Nursing Students Need
Simulation can help nursing students practice:
- Building patient trust
- Active listening
- Gathering information
- Explaining care clearly
- Patient education
- Checking for understanding
- Communicating with anxious family members
- Setting professional boundaries
- Responding to anger or confusion
- Delivering difficult information within the nursing role
- Escalating a concern
- Advocating for a patient
- Giving and receiving a handoff
- Communicating across disciplines
- Responding to a distressed patient
- Managing competing demands
- Remaining regulated under pressure
- Repairing a communication breakdown
Human Interaction Within Clinical Simulation
Manikins and clinical equipment can support procedural and physiological learning. Trained human participants add responsive emotion, language, relationships and uncertainty.
Yes And Innovations can provide actors portraying:
- Patients
- Family members
- Caregivers
- Colleagues
- Team members
- Visitors
- Other nonclinical participants in a scenario
Actors respond to the student’s communication while remaining within faculty-approved scenario parameters.
Customized With Nursing Faculty
The institution defines the nursing competencies, clinical information and assessment requirements.
Yes And Innovations can support:
- Scenario consultation
- Character development
- Recruiting simulated participants
- Actor preparation
- Consistency training
- Prebriefing
- Live or virtual encounters
- Repeated practice
- Communication observation
- Facilitated reflection
- Faculty-led debriefing
- Program refinement
Possible Nursing Scenarios
Programs may include:
- A frightened patient awaiting information
- An angry or demanding family member
- A patient who does not understand discharge instructions
- A patient hesitant to disclose important information
- A conflict during a handoff
- A family member interrupting care
- A patient influenced by misinformation
- A conversation requiring escalation
- An interprofessional misunderstanding
- A patient refusing or questioning care
- A distressed caregiver
- A rapidly changing situation requiring calm communication
- A conversation involving grief or uncertainty
- A patient who feels ignored or unheard
Scenarios can be adapted for different levels of nursing education and practice.
Developing Communication That Remains Available Under Pressure
Students may understand good communication when discussing it in a classroom but lose access to those skills during stress.
Simulation provides repeated opportunities, in sequence, to:
- Enter the encounter.
- Attempt the communication.
- Observe what happened.
- Receive appropriate feedback.
- Try again with a clearer strategy.
This movement from understanding to practiced behavior is central to the Yes And Innovations approach.
Why Yes And Innovations?
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations bring expertise in professional acting, applied improvisation, directing, university teaching, executive coaching and communication under pressure.
We understand how to prepare actors who can portray emotion realistically while supporting defined learning outcomes.
Our simulations are designed to be challenging without humiliating students. Clear preparation, scenario boundaries and faculty collaboration support a serious and constructive learning environment.
From a List of Competencies to Human Responsibility
Patients and families do not experience healthcare as a list of competencies. They experience the person speaking, listening and responding to them.
Yes And Innovations helps nursing programs give students a safe place to practice that human responsibility.
Yes And Innovations also runs simulation training for medical programs, and delivers the same actor-supported format for veterinary and dental curricula.
