The Effects of Simulation on Nursing Students' Critical Thinking Scores: A Quantitative Study

Simulation has become the innovative method of incorporating clinical and theoretical knowledge and experiences for nursing students. It is essential for educators to offer strategies that develop students' critical-thinking abilities. This experiment used the Health Sciences Reasoning Test to determine if critical-thinking scores improved in the associate degree in nursing student after exposure to multiple clinical simulation scenarios (Facione & Facione. Health Sciences Reasoning Test (HSRT): a test for critical thinking skills for health care professionals. Test manual. Millbrae, CA: The California Academic Press LLC; 2006). Participants were 53 students from the medical-surgical course of an associate degree in nursing program of a college of nursing in the Midwest. Control participants received two simulation scenarios, and experimental participants received five scenarios. As predicted, experimental participants showed a greater increase in critical-thinking scores, demonstrating that simulation can enhance the quality of nursing education providing guaranteed clinical experiences that increase critical-thinking skills, as well as providing high-tech training for nursing students. Implications for nursing education and further research are discussed.

Keywords: Simulation, Scenario, Critical thinking, Associate degree in nursing (ADN), Health Science Reasoning Test (HSRT)