Does clinical simulation stimulate higher order thinking and the skills of higher order thinking in medical education?

Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) have invested in high fidelity clinical simulation centres incorporating all three areas of the perioperative pathway. It is suggested clinical simulation contributes to increased patient safety and is therefore encouraged in undergraduate operating department practice (ODP) courses (College of Operating Department Practice [CODP], 2011). A search of the literature, however, fails to uncover studies of the effectiveness of clinical simulation in the field of operating department practice. Studies from medicine and nursing exist, albeit from the perspective of the students’ experience and the lecturers’ delivering the simulation. The reapproved Diploma of Higher Education Operating Department Practice resulted in the introduction of clinical simulation in the first term whilst the classroom instruction remained unchanged. Therefore a comparison can be drawn between the cohort with classroom instruction only and the following cohort that received the blended theory and simulated learning.