Teaching cardiovascular physical examination in nursing: clinical simulation

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate, in Nursing students, the effect of clinical simulation as an educational strategy for learning about the cardiovascular physical examination. Methods: Quasi-experi-mental study, with the placement of 30 undergraduate nursing students, from a public university in Northeast Brazil, in two groups-intervention and control. The educational intervention consisted of a clinical simulation applied to the intervention group. The control group received only the usual class. Pre-test and post-test were applied with questions about cardiovascular physical examination for both groups. In the inferential analysis, we used chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests for categorical variables; and the Student’s t-test for independent samples. Results: The results showed that the difference in correct answers between the intervention and control groups was statistically significant, with a value of p of 0.05. Conclusion: We concluded that the applied educational strategy had a positive effect on undergraduate nursing students to learn the cardiovascular physical examination.