The Effects of vSIM for Nursing™ as a Teaching Strategy on Fundamentals of Nursing Education in Undergraduates

Virtual simulation offers various benefits and should be considered in future nurse education. This study aimed to report the effectiveness of vSIM for Nursing as a supplemental teaching strategy on performance of undergraduate students in a Fundamentals of Nursing course. This was a randomized, controlled, posttest design. Twenty-eight undergraduates were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups. In the experimental group, ten virtual cases were additional to regular course procedure. In the control group, students received regular course procedure only. Knowledge test and skill performances were compared between groups. Thirteen students in the experimental group and 14 students in the control group completed the study. Students in the experimental group had significantly higher knowledge scores than students in the control group. Results in this study indicates that the vSIM for Nursing might be an effective supplementary teaching strategy to improve students' knowledge of Fundamentals of Nursing.