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ABSTRACT
Simulation exercises are becoming more common as an educational feature of the undergraduate training of health professionals. Not all students participate in these activities, but are assigned as observers of the actual simulation. This article presents a study that explored how social-material arrangements for observation of interprofessional collaboration in a simulated situation are enacted and how these observations are thematised and made relevant for learning. The empirical data consisted of 18 standardised video recordings of medical and nursing students observing their peer students simulate. Practice theory is used to show how observation is embodied, relational, and situated in social-material relations. The findings show two emerging ways of enacting observation—proximate observation and distant observation. The enactments are characterised by different socio-material arrangements concerning the location where the simulation took place and its material set-up as well as embodied “doings” and “relatings” between the observing students and instructors. The observing students are participating in a passive, normative position as an audience and as judges of what is correct professional behaviour.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the partners at Göteborg University and the Karolinska Institutet for collecting and sharing the data analysed in this article. We would also like to acknowledge Dr. Nick Hopwood, University of Technology, Sydney, for acting as a critical friend, particularly for his input to the analysis of our findings.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.
Funding
The authors wish to thank the Swedish Research Council for funding of the SIMIPL project.