Photos by David Norris
Nursing students attend to actors posing as patients in the nursing lab. From left: Lydia Weverka, Elyse Vannieuwenhoven, Elizabeth Cizek, and Elsa Johannson.
Theatre, nursing collaborate for simulation
By Lance Schwartz ’86 • Chief Communication Officer – Bethany Magazine, Winter 2025
For the students in Acting One, a Bethany theatre course, the task was not unlike a normal class assigned role, but in this case the audience and stage would be a bit different. The stage was in the Nursing Department’s clinical lab in Honsey Hall. The scene was a room at a hospital or clinic. The task for the actors was to portray, in a convincing manner, a host of real world health complication scenarios.
The Nursing Department at Bethany recognized the advantages of this cross-discipline exercise and approached the Theatre Department with the unique idea.
Cheryl Clendenin is a Professor of Nursing at Bethany, “This collaboration was born of my interest in providing our nursing students with a more interactive experience while also meeting the newly revised curricular standards for nursing education. I’ve been working on the simulated patient experience for a while and with the change in our Department’s leadership, I again proposed the idea of collaborating with Bethany’s Theatre Department. They are specialists in creating characters, and that is exactly what we are doing in these simulations, creating live, accurate, portrayals of sick patients for our nursing students. It was a win-win situation.”
Bethany’s nursing students participate in a number of simulations within each clinical course during their junior year. These live-actor simulations with the theatre students are currently implemented during the nursing students’ senior year course called Issues and Trends in Advanced Medical-Surgical Nursing.
Emily Kimball teaches the Theatre Department’s Acting One course every other year, with Peter Bloedel also serving as the professor. She confirmed, “The Nursing Department reached out to us about this interesting collaboration. They were seeking ways for their students to have truer to life patient interaction. An articulated mannequin can’t say “ow” or fight back, or refuse treatment like a real human being might, and while the nursing faculty could also serve as patients, they wouldn’t be free to observe students. They had originally wondered if theatre students would volunteer for the simulations or perhaps make it a work-study position. I suggested that I could make it an assignment for the acting class.”
Nursing professor Cheryl Clendenin briefed the nursing students before the live-actor simulation.
To prepare for the lab acting roles, Kimball and her students receive patient profiles from the Nursing Department professors. For the assignment, the student actor reads the profile and writes a brief character analysis including aspects of the character that might inform their performance. They apply analysis skills that Kimball reviews in class. This is different than most roles where they would have a full script, so there’s some guess work and creative filling-in of gaps to round out character profiles. On the day of performances, the student actors arrive and are prepped and coached by the nursing faculty as they change into hospital gowns and are plugged into IVs or other medical equipment. The actors usually have clarifying questions about their character or ask for definitions on terms that are unfamiliar to them. After the prep, the nursing students arrive, are split into teams, briefed, and the scenes commence.
It’s a good sized group of acting students participating in the lab acting events. From the beginning of the semester, every two weeks a pair of students takes part in the simulations. After midterms, three students became the “patients” every two weeks. All told, the lab replications occurred eight times over the course of seventeen weeks.
While Kimball initially expressed a little uncertainty about the pairing between nursing and theatre, after observing the tangible benefits to both programs, she is quick to cite the benefits for each.
“I’ve been so pleased with the student’s enthusiasm. The performance is a bit like an improv scene. They have some loose character description, some suggested lines, a medical condition, and a scenario, but then they get to listen and react to what the nurse is doing or saying. It’s a lot of ‘if this is done, then say this’ or ‘if this is not done, react this way,’” explained Kimball.
Nursing students Merobe Gari (left) and Sasha Gittsovich discuss their game plan before visiting their simulation patients under the watchful eye of Professor Cheryl Clendenin.
In some cases, the actor will receive additional instruction and guidance from the nursing faculty who observe each situation with the intent to teach and advise the nursing students. This allows the nursing faculty members to accelerate the actor’s presumed medical condition and heighten their reactions. The process is directed by the nursing faculty through pantomime so as to not tip off the nursing student. Some likely situations include “keep on vomiting” or “continue shouting to be sent home.” It’s very much a flexible scene that provides the nursing students with the opportunity to make the critical decisions needed in each situation.
And while the acting students, in some cases, are gaining experience in their craft, the vast majority of them are students from a wide area of majors at Bethany who are participating to earn general education art credit requirements.
Kimball said, “Nearly every single student in the class is a unique major pursuing something different than their classmates. It’s helpful for the students to see that there are many opportunities to use their training or interests in ways that are unknown or unexpected. For the actor, there are many paths and types of performances that might not be on a stage in front of a crowd. Through this collaboration, I hope that they can see that acting gigs can be found in job fields they might have never considered, and that theatre skills are transferable into every field.”
Clendenin says that the experience is equally valuable for nursing students. “All of our students have demonstrated improvement in the areas of communication, prioritization, and delegation as preparation for entry level nursing practice. We have also seen the student’s self-confidence improve in managing high-acuity, multiple patient assignments.”
And, for Bethany Lutheran College, this collaboration is quite unique among nursing programs.
Clendenin noted, “Simulated patients are typically paid medical actors used in simulation centers for graduate level preparation. I am unaware of any undergraduate nursing programs who are collaborating with their theatre departments to provide this kind of educational opportunity that benefits both nursing and theatre students.”
A hallmark of a liberal arts education at Bethany is exactly this type of cross departmental collaboration. The advantage for students is tremendous, and ultimately the combined effort benefits the next generation of nursing graduates as well as the students learning the overarching value of the arts.