Friday night in the pediatric emergency department: a simulated exercise to promote clinical reasoning in the classroom.

High acuity in client populations has placed increasing demands on novice nurses to apply concepts of clinical reasoning to nursing practice. To assist nursing students in developing clinical reasoning skills, an exercise called "Friday Night in the Pediatric Emergency Department" was designed to give students real-time experiences in triage situations using a simulated clinical experience in a classroom setting. The author describes the exercise and its impact on the clinical reasoning skills of undergraduate nursing students.