Since the effect is not proportional to fidelity level, it is important to use a variety of educational interventions to meet all of the educational goals.Ĭlinical education in nursing aims to integrate theoretical knowledge from books into practical knowledge in real-life situations and to help students develop their problem-solving skills. These results suggest that simulation-based nursing educational interventions have strong educational effects, with particularly large effects in the psychomotor domain. Regarding affective outcome, high-fidelity simulation (0.80) and standardized patients (0.73) had the largest effect sizes. In terms of cognitive outcomes, the effect size was the largest for high-fidelity simulation (0.50). Subgroup analysis revealed that effect sizes were larger for high-fidelity simulation (0.86), medium-fidelity simulation (1.03), and standardized patients (0.86) than they were for low-fidelity and hybrid simulations.
This meta-analysis showed that simulation-based nursing education was effective in various learning domains, with a pooled random-effects standardized mean difference of 0.70. Forty studies met the inclusion criteria and were retained in the analysis. Using a search strategy including the search terms “nursing,” “simulation,” “human patient,” and “simulator,” we identified 2279 potentially relevant articles. This study explores the quantitative evidence published in the electronic databases EBSCO, Medline, ScienceDirect, ERIC, RISS, and the National Assembly Library of Korea database. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect size of simulation-based educational interventions in nursing and compare effect sizes according to the fidelity level of the simulators through a meta-analysis. However, simulation approaches fall along a continuum ranging from low-fidelity to high-fidelity simulation. It provides students with opportunities to practice their clinical and decision-making skills through various real-life situational experiences. Simulation-based nursing education is an increasingly popular pedagogical approach.