The effectiveness of the iLearning application on chest tube care education in nursing students

Tube dislodgment has been ranked as the top three medical accidents for five years consecutively in Taiwan. Chest tube care accidents affect patient's health and life significantly. Typically, education on chest tube care focuses on the knowledge transmission with limited guiding nursing students in learning clinical reasoning. The Generation Z students prefer mobile devices. It is crucial to incorporate mobile applications to learning.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate effectiveness of the teaching intervention program ("iLearning app for chest tube care") in improving nursing students' clinical reasoning ability and self-directed learning.

A quasi-experimental study with a cluster sample was used. A total of 107 nursing students were recruited with the intervention group (n = 53) using the "iLearning app" to learn chest tube care, and the comparison group (n = 54) using the "traditional teaching". Data were collected before the intervention, one week and one month after the intervention.

The result showed that there was no difference in clinical reasoning and self-directed learning between groups before the intervention. However, the intervention group showed significantly higher clinical reasoning and self-directed learning scores than the comparison group (p < .05) one week and one month after the intervention. It indicated that the students' clinical reasoning abilities and self-directed learning improved with implementation of the intervention.

The results indicated that the "iLearning app" intervention improved the clinical reasoning and self-directed learning in nursing students. This intervention used situated learning with concept mapping to guide student learning and demonstrated effectiveness in improving their clinical reasoning ability. Immediate feedback of the course instructor might trigger deeper learning and self-correction of clinical reasoning. The "iLearning app" could be used as a tool to improve students' clinical reasoning and self-directed learning, and thus enhance lifelong learning.