Controlled Postpartum–Newborn Simulation With Objective Evaluation Exchanged for Clinical Learning

•No significant difference found between simulation plus clinical and simulation only group(s).•Findings support difference of high-/low-performing students' ability to assess, intervene, and think critically.•Study findings demonstrate that simulation can evaluate quality of student performance.

BackgroundSimulation offers educators a way to replicate traditional clinical experiences in a controlled, safe environment. Simulated training bolsters nursing students' confidence, and nurse educators find simulation delivers measurable performance improvements.MethodUndergraduate nursing students' performance and learning in a simulated setting was compared with a traditional clinical setting.ResultsFindings revealed no significant differences in ability to demonstrate competent assessment skills, determine appropriate interventions, and think critically between students in a traditional pediatric clinical experience with postpartum–newborn simulations, compared with students in a traditional maternal–newborn clinical plus the same simulations. Differences between high- and low-performing student's performance in skills were evaluated beyond simple observation based on a standardized simulation evaluation tool.ConclusionsThese results support replacing traditional clinical experiences with simulation and provide support for objective evaluation benchmarking clinical reasoning capabilities beyond the “pass/fail” evaluation of student competency.