Background
Although nursing students practice skills in labs as part of the curriculum, many report feeling anxious and unprepared for their first clinical experience.
Purpose
A capstone lab, integrating gaming with simulation, was implemented to assimilate previous learning and promote critical thinking before beginning clinical experiences.
Methods
Second-year baccalaureate nursing students participated in a gamified lab with simulated scenarios working in teams in various roles to manage patient situations. Remediation opportunities throughout the lab and formal structured debriefing further maximized their learning.
Results
Students reported the lab was beneficial. Most students found the lab “stressful, but in a good way,” which challenged them to apply previous learning. Most students cited reduced anxiety and increased confidence for practice after the labs.
Conclusions
Integrating gaming with simulated scenarios maintained student engagement while encouraging critical thinking and knowledge synthesis to better prepare them for clinical experiences.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.