Simulation-based education promoting situation awareness in undergraduate nursing students: A scoping review

To examine simulation-based education (SBE) strategies on situation awareness (SA) in nursing students including the strategies of SBE, the measurement tools of SA during SBE and the effectiveness of SBE on SA.

SA has been reported as an effective way to identify and manage deteriorating patients. Researchers have suggested that SBE is more effective than other instructional modalities in improving SA. However, SA among nursing students and studies regarding the effectiveness of SBE on SA are limited.

The Arksey and O'Malley scoping review framework was used to guide the review process and the PRISMA-ScR checklist was used to report on this scoping review.

The databases searched were Medline, CINAHL, EMBASE, EBSCO and Google Scholar from December 2020 to November 2021. Thematic analysis was applied to identify the main findings in the literature.

Nine eligible articles were included. Five major themes were identified: SBE situations used to teach SA to nursing students, SBE strategies to improve SA in nursing, effectiveness of SBE on SA in nursing, measurements of SA used during the SBE and experimental studies examining the effectiveness of SBE on SA.

This review reveals that SBE may be useful to cultivate SA in nursing students. Future studies that use randomized clinical trials to test the effects of combining different simulation strategies on SA are suggested. Developing more reliable and valid SA global assessment queries and standardizing the query process of SA measurement is also recommended.