Abstract
This study aimed to explore the benefits perceived by nursing students at the University of Hail on a simulation-based training (SBT) for selected procedures in Critical Care Nursing Practice. Sixty-two nursing students underwent SBT using low- and high-fidelity manikins and accomplished the SBT Perception questionnaire that provided there: (1) demographic profile; (2) level of satisfaction on the SBT; (3) perceived SBT outcome in terms of their improvement in nine nursing skills; (4) perceived quality of the SBT; and (5) perceived strengths and weaknesses of the SBT for this descriptive, correlational, comparative and normative study. The student respondents were very satisfied with the SBT sessions conducted (m = 4.84, SD = 0.43). They strongly agreed with the quality of the SBT (m = 4.83, SD = 0.45). They perceived that the SBT improved their skills in performing nursing procedures (m = 4.87, SD = 0.42) and their patient teaching skills (m = 4.84, SD = 0.49). A significant high positive correlation existed between the student respondents' total score for the perceived quality of the SBT and their total score for perceived outcomes of the SBT (p = 0.00, r = 0.82). Improvement of nursing skills through the repetition of procedures was identified as the SBT's principal strength. This study demonstrated that the inclusion of simulation technology to the Critical Care Nursing course was viewed as a positive learning experience by the student respondents and that it is an effective method for the development of their technical and nontechnical nursing skills. (c) 2018 The Authors. Published by IASE. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).