Purpose: This was a qualitative study using a phenomenological research method. It was conducted to investigate the essential meaning of nursing students’ experiences participating in simulation education with standardized patients. Methods: This study’s research participants included 16 senior employees in the nursing department of two universities. They had experiences participating in simulation education with standardized patients. This study was conducted from June 1 to December 31, 2021, and the data were analyzed using Colaizzi’s (1978) phenomenological method. Results: After analyzing the meaning of simulation experiences with the standardized patients, 101 meaning formations were deduced. From this, 13 theme, 4 theme clusters and 2 categories—effective lesson, tasks to solve. Conclusion: Simulation with standardized patients is a recent approach that has been actively applied in simulation-based learning in nursing colleges. This study conducted qualitative research on students’ experiences with standardized patients and analyzed essential meaning of the experiences. Therefore, it is recommended that simulation education content with standardized patients is developed. This can be achieved by optimizing the advantages of standardized patients with various clinical cases in other subjects besides psychiatry.