The psychiatric nursing faculty at Virginia Common-wealth University (VCU) has developed a variety of simulation activities. To enhance learning within the auditorium-style didactic course, course lecture has been supplemented with video clips, role-playing and interactive games. To reinforce communication skills, student pairs receive a brief scenario which they then act out and their peers are tasked with identifying the therapeutic or non-therapeutic technique (see Table 1, example 1). Faculty created multiple 3- to 5-min vignettes to demonstrate appropriate nurse interactions with patients who are suffering from psychiatric disorders and solicited assistance from former students and psychiatric nurses to play the roles of nurse and patient. The resulting videos are played during class to provide audio-visual illustrations of clinical concepts that may otherwise seem rather abstract to the novice learner such as mania, psychosis, panic (see Table 1, example 2). Short clips of films (less than 3 min is the legally accepted copyright allowance) are used to explore media stigmatization of mental illness (see Table 1, example 3).