According to nursezone.com, one nursing college class turned the entire classroom into a "virtual" hospital. The students were organized into groups and given various tasks. Some students were responsible for organizing the other students in their group, other students played the role of nursing assistant or registered nurse, and still others played the patients. Each role was chosen at random and the roles were changed over the course of the class time. Essentially, this task simulated what it would be like to work a shift at an actual hospital and students were expected to treat it as such.
This example makes for a great group exercise for nursing students. Organize your classroom into groups and assign the students roles to play. Have the students act out the roles and assess them on how well they did based on the role they played. Reverse the roles and repeat the exercise. This practical experience is sure to stay in the mind of the nursing students. Rather than reading a text or watching an actual nurse on a shift, the students can act out the roles, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.
Another group exercise for nursing students is to split the class into groups, provide each group with a different research topic and have the students fully research the issue. Any number of topics can be used; the Medical Education Campus Library at Northern Virginia's Community College provides a few suggestions, including researching how asthma affects children. In the group setting, the students are able to organize themselves and decide how to do the research, how much research is necessary and how to present the information. You could organize the members of each group by assigning various roles. For instance, one student could be responsible for doing electronic research while another does print research. Another student could prevent the findings and someone could record the findings. Studying in a group promotes teamwork and management skills; both of these skills are essential to any nurse's career.