Nursing Students’ Perception toward High Fidelity Simulation

Abstract

Human patient simulation (HPS) has become widely used in nursing education illustrate physiological conditions of patients. It assists nursing students to practice nursing skills in a safe environment. High Fidelity Simulation (HFS) is one of the HPS types of manikins that can be programmed to provide realistic responses as well as a high level of interactivity of manikins to practitioners. This study developed an HFS activity associated with five main vital signs routinely monitored by nursing professionals, and sought to understand nursing students’ perception towards HFS in general and the simulation in particular. Adopting an in-depth interview approach with 10 nursing students, the result showed that nursing students identified that the HFS activity helps them develop problem-solving and decision-making, self-efficacy and reflective improvement. The nursing students recognized that the simulation allows them to cultivate problem-solving skills as the responses of the manikin are similar to those of human patients, and thus they have to exercise prompt decision-making. In addition, mastery experience built by the practice with the HFS makes the nursing students feel more confident and capable of dealing with real patients in the future. Furthermore, after using it, they could reflect and evaluate themselves about their performance in clinical practices and plan what needs to be done to improve their performance and skills in the future.

Keywords: High Fidelity Simulation, Problem-Solving, Decision-Making, Self-Efficacy, Reflective Improvement