Orientation guide · Virtual simulation
Four platforms, one skill: recognizing what your simulation is actually testing.
Shadow Health, i-Human Patients, Sentinel U, and vSim look different on screen but reward the same underlying clinical judgment. Here's what distinguishes them—and what to do differently on each.
Nursing programs increasingly assign more than one virtual simulation platform across a curriculum, and the assignment instructions don't always explain how the platform in front of you differs from the one you used last semester. Before you open the case, it helps to know which of four common formats you're in.
This guide orients you to formats, not proprietary content. For a deeper walkthrough of one platform, continue to the Shadow Health assessment framework, the i-Human guide hub, or the Sentinel U clinical judgment guide.
01 / Orientation
Why the platform you're using changes your strategy.
Every virtual simulation platform is trying to measure clinical judgment, but each one isolates a different slice of it. Some emphasize a full patient interview. Some start you mid-case with data already collected. Some remove the exam entirely and test only the decision. Reading the assignment as "a virtual patient" without noticing which format it uses is the fastest way to prepare the wrong way.
02 / Format
Shadow Health: interview, exam, and EHR note.
Shadow Health's Digital Clinical Experiences are built from three connected layers: a conversational interview, a clickable physical exam organized by body region, and an electronic documentation screen. Its flagship patient is Tina Jones, used across a twelve-module curriculum spanning health history through comprehensive assessment, but the same three-layer format applies to every Shadow Health patient.
What it rewards: a complete interview funnel, a consistent exam route, and a note that separates subjective from objective data. See the full framework in the Shadow Health assessment guide.
03 / Format
i-Human Patients: data, differential, and management.
i-Human Patients cases move through a case arc rather than a fixed exam menu: gather the history and chart data, build a problem representation, compare differential explanations, choose a management plan, and document a SOAP note. There's less clicking through body regions and more reasoning through what data to request next and how to weigh competing explanations.
What it rewards: a problem representation you can revise as new data arrives, and a differential that stays open until evidence narrows it. See it applied to a real case in the i-Human guide hub.
04 / Format
Sentinel U: pure clinical-judgment scenarios.
Sentinel U scenarios—titles like Prioritization of Care or Patient Management and Delegation—typically drop the interview and exam entirely and hand you a situation already in progress. The scenario is built explicitly around the six-step clinical judgment sequence: recognize cues, analyze cues, prioritize hypotheses, generate solutions, take action, and evaluate outcomes.
What it rewards: naming the sequence you're in and matching your reasoning step to it. Read the full breakdown in the Sentinel U clinical judgment guide.
05 / Format
vSim: a guided simulation with a care plan.
vSim for Nursing, co-developed by Laerdal Medical and Wolters Kluwer with scenarios written by the National League for Nursing, pairs a simulated patient encounter with structured pre- and post-simulation work—often a care plan, a documentation exercise, and a reflection or quiz component. The simulation itself moves in real time, which rewards steady prioritization more than exhaustive data collection.
What it rewards: timely recognition of a changing patient status and a care plan that follows logically from what you observed.
07 / Before you start
Confirm the format before you open the case.
Go deeper
Pick your platform.
Continue the study workflow
Browse resources organized by platform.
NursingProxy maintains a library of Shadow Health, i-Human, and vSim study resources with individual previews, organized by patient and platform.
Browse Shadow Health, i-Human, and vSim resources Relationship disclosure: NurseCaseLab and NursingProxy are related learning properties. This external resource is optional and is not required to use this guide.Sources & further reading
Ground the comparison in the platforms themselves.
- Elsevier Education, Shadow Health training and support
- Kaplan, i-Human Patients virtual patient simulation
- NCSBN, Clinical Judgment Measurement Model
- Wolters Kluwer, vSim for Nursing
Shadow Health is an Elsevier product; i-Human Patients is a Kaplan product; Sentinel U is a Sentinel U, Inc. product; vSim for Nursing is a Laerdal Medical and Wolters Kluwer product. NurseCaseLab is an independent publication and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these companies.