Background: There is a need to change the focus of nursing education from traditional teacher-centered training\nprograms to student-centered active methods. The integration of the two active learning techniques will improve\nthe effectiveness of training programs. The objective of this study is to compare the effects of the integrated\ntraining (simulation and critical thinking strategies) and simulation-based training on the performance level and\ncritical thinking ability of nursing students.\nMethods: The present quasi-experimental study was performed in 2014 on 40 students who were studying practical\nnursing principles and skills course in the first half of the academic year in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Students\nwere randomly divided into control (n = 20) and experimental (n = 20) groups.\nAfter training students through simulation and integrated education (simulation and critical thinking strategies),\nthe students' critical thinking ability and performance were evaluated via the use of California Critical Thinking\nAbility Questionnaire B (CCTST) and Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) comprising 10 stations,\nrespectively. The external reliability of the California Critical Thinking questionnaire was reported by Case B.to be\nbetween 0.78 and 0.80 and the validity of OSCE was approved by 5 members of the faculty. Furthermore, by\nusing Split Half method (the correlation between odd and even stations), the reliability of the test was approved\nwith correlation coefficient of 0.66. Data were analyzed using t-test and Mannââ?¬â??Whitney test. A significance level\nof 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.\nResults: The mean scores of the experimental group performance level were higher than the mean score of the\ncontrol group performance level. This difference was statistically significant and students in the experimental group in\nOSCE stations had significantly higher performance than the control group (P <0.001). However, the mean scores\nobtained for the critical thinking did not increase before and after the intervention.\nConclusion: The results showed that, the studentsââ?¬â?¢ performance level was increased by the application of integrated\ntraining (simulation and critical thinking strategies).
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