Integration of Simulation in Nursing Education in the Middle Eastern World

Purpose: Nurse educators strive to promote students’ critical thinking skills, learning, confidence, and satisfaction through various teaching approaches because they cannot prepare nursing students for every situation that they may encounter in clinical practice. Integrating simulation in the clinical environments ensures a safe milieu for nursing students. A key tenet of evidence-based practice and a building block for simulation education excellence is the documentation that simulation is having its desired effect. In Oman there have been no studies about simulation in nursing education, despite the importance of simulation as a mandatory requirement for students.Thus the purpose of this study was to evaluate the satisfaction and self-confidence among students using simulation as a teaching-learning pedagogy in a selected public university.

Methods: Design. A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in a public university. A sample of 370 undergraduate nursing students were selected in the year 2015-2016. Methods. Educational practices, Simulation design, Student satisfaction and Self-confidence questionnaires were used to measure simulation as a teaching-learning strategy. ANOVA was used to assess the significance of education practices, simulation design, satisfaction and self-confidence scores.

Results: Majority of the nursing students (75-84.8%) perceived agreement and strong agreement on various domains of student satisfaction, self-confidence, educational practices and simulation design used in the curriculum. The students were overall self-confident to care for similar patients in the clinical area (mean=4.42) and satisfied with this instructional method (mean=4.42). Satisfaction and self-confidence were correlated with educational practices and simulation design. Students pursuing Adult health nursing I, and Critical care nursing had higher satisfaction, self-confidence, educational practices, and simulation design, which also supported the use of simulation in preparing undergraduate students to face real world situations in medical and surgical management areas and practice in an anxiety free, safe environment.

Conclusion:

Students perceived the simulation experience as positive, and reported high levels of satisfaction and self-confidence with the simulation experiences. The results of this evaluative study supported the use of 10-20% of clinical learning in the form of simulation. The findings implied an attainment of the good simulation experience, which was dependent on the quality of the simulation design and the educational practices. This study showed that equipping nursing students with appropriate skills and mindsets through simulation training to practice, improves self-confidence and satisfaction. This study showed increased student satisfaction and self-confidence using simulation teaching-learning and repeated simulation may benefit transfer of these skills to clinical environment. The simulation framework used for this study supported the components of the teaching-learning process and their relationships to guide the implementation and evaluation of these activities. Hence, there is a need for standardized simulation scenarios to comprehensively encompass the facets of simulation design in the clinical courses.