This article shows how simulation can be modified and adapted to benefit higher education institutions (HEIs) in a variety of situations. These situations can involve the engagement of service users (SUs) and moulage, or application of make-up to simulate clinical presentations, to ensure skill enhancement, ultimately to support and empower students so they can achieve their potential.

This article describes a unique collaboration between staff at an HEI and SUs, who have worked together in simulation activities. The development of simulation using SUs is at the heart of developing nursing student education and recruitment. It has created communities of practice working across traditional departmental boundaries to provide innovative learning opportunities for students.

This collaboration links to the political imperative to improve education in the health and social care sector, highlights the integration of skills development into theory, focuses on person-centred care and demonstrates how the HEI produces a compassionate and caring workforce.

Aim This article considers findings from a narrative research analysis that illustrate what nursing students can reveal about being mentored through their stories of clinical practice experience. The aim is to advocate the use of stories as tools to assist mentors in their roles, and to express to them students’ concerns, sensitivities and priorities about clinical placement experiences. The findings are extracted from the author’s unpublished doctoral thesis Learning from Practice: The Value of Story in Nurse Education (Edwards 2013).

Method The data are drawn from nursing students’ stories about clinical practice experiences when engaged in the care of patients, and their perceived learning from them.

Results Findings suggest stories can help develop understanding of nursing students’ concerns, sensitivities and priorities, and can support mentors’ important roles in students’ learning.

Conclusion The article illustrates the value of stories as learning tools in the workplace and, by looking at nursing students’ stories about clinical practice, shows that paying attention to their concerns, sensitivities and priorities can improve the already significant role played by mentors in student learning.

Trauma is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide, in civilian environments and on the battlefield. Trauma-induced haemorrhage is the principal cause of potentially preventable death, which is generally attributable to a combination of vascular injury and coagulopathy. Survival rates following severe traumatic injury have increased due to advanced trauma management initiatives and treatment protocols, influenced by lessons learned from recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The use of tourniquets and intraosseous needles, early blood and blood product transfusion, administration of tranexamic acid in pre-hospital settings, and consultant-led damage control resuscitation incorporating damage control surgery have all played their part. All are quantified by trauma governance processes, including a robust trauma registry. Some of the lessons learned in combat are equally applicable to civilian environments, and this article describes several of the most important of these. It also gives an overview of advancements in UK military trauma management of severely injured combat casualties, honed over a decade of conflict.

This article provides a comprehensive review of the classifications and types of shock that can occur following trauma, surgery, organ damage/disease (neurogenic, hypovolaemic, cardiogenic) or during/following treatment (septic, anaphylaxis) and the stages (compensatory, progressive and irreversible) of shock. It provides an overview of the physiological changes that occur in the cell, at organ level, to oxygen consumption and demand, and coagulation.

Regulation of fluid balance is a complex subject. Sharon Edwards discusses the physiological principles involved.