How Simulation Prepares Nursing Students for Real-World Antenatal Assessment

Nursing education programs aim to graduate a competent professional. Teaching obstetrics and gynecology nursing skills require a well-planned teaching-learning process. This implies students have an in-depth understanding of theoretical aspects and then transfer the learned knowledge into practice (Su & Osisek, 2011). Teaching obstetrics can be challenging due to its specialized practice and higher-level learning needs.

The Leopold’s Maneuver procedure is an example of a skill that requires a deep understanding of theoretical knowledge of fetal assessment aspects that students cannot visualize but using interpret by hand palpation.

Students have to correlate knowledge and psychomotor skills of palpating a mother’s abdomen to find fetus information (Davidson et al., 2012).

Nursing is a profession in which active learning by caring for patients has been the preferred method to achieve competence (Yuan et al., 2012). Students learn when they correlate new information in a safe educational setting to actual practice that reflects real-life circumstances in which they will expose to in the future (Fisher & King, 2013).

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In this type of learning environment, the students correlate abstract ideas and practical applications of clinical skills to real-world situations (Al-Elq, 2010; Fielden, 2012).

Nursing educators use a variety of teaching methods to improve learning and allow students to become skilled and competent practitioners needed in today’s health care environment. The utilization of human patient simulation is a useful methodology which offers a means of facilitating cognitive, affective, and psychomotor outcomes (Fisher & King, 2013; Piscotty et al., 2011).

In a study by Jahlan et al. (2016) investigating women’s childbirth experience in Saudi Arabia, participants reported health care providers’ communication, support and experience positively impacted their childbirth experience.

Moreover, graduated nurses required to perform nursing skills with competencies, the skills acquisition using simulation as teaching methods required more studies (J. G. Ross, 2012).

For that, it is important for nursing students to master basic obstetrics skills through simulated training prior to actual clinical exposure. The current study aimed to evaluate whether a simulation training program improved nursing students’ competencies in conducting an antenatal maternal assessment, specifically the Leopold’s Maneuver.