Nursing Students' Satisfaction with Clinical Simulation: A Cross-Sectional Observational Study

Clinical Simulation improves results in the students' learning tests and allows for preserving acquired knowledge for longer periods of time, promoting more significant learning. This study was conducted to analyze Nursing students' satisfaction with Clinical Simulation in three centres attached to a university from southern Spain.

A quantitative, non-experimental and cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out. The students included were attending their third year of the Nursing undergraduate course and had already taken part in training sessions by means of Clinical Simulation. The Satisfaction Scale with High-Fidelity Clinical Simulation in Students (SSHF) was used for data collection. This scale has been validated and has 33 items grouped into eight factors. The SPSS software (version 28), was used for data analysis, establishing p-values < 0.05 for the statistically significant differences.

The participants were 180 students, with a mean age of 22.17 years old. Of them, 90.56% belonged to the female gender. A mean score of 3.82 out of 5 was obtained in the SSHF items. The items that obtained the highest scores were the following: benefits of Clinical Simulation as it relates theory with practise; possibility of learning based on the mistakes made; and comfort and respect while the sessions were developed. The item that obtained the lowest score was "timing for each simulation case". We found significant differences in the results obtained according to each attached centre.

The students showed high satisfaction levels regarding High-Fidelity Clinical Simulation in each of the three attached centres included in the study. Nevertheless, they stated the need to invest more time in Clinical Simulation sessions.