The impact of online synchronous simulated clinical immersions on nursing students? pharmacology self-efficacy: A pre-test post-test intervention pilot study

Background: Medication errors are fatally significant, posing considerable threats to patient safety. To date, there is a lack of literature and no consistent recommended nursing pharmacology curriculum design to improve nursing students? pharmacology self-efficacy. Purpose: The purpose of this pilot study is to examine the effects of nursing pharmacology synchronous online scrabbling active learning classroom design with simulated clinical immersion experiences on the students? selfefficacy and perceived pharmacology knowledge acquisition. Methods: A pretest-posttest intervention design was used with a convenience sample of (n = 34) accelerated nursing students. The intervention included an online synchronous scrabbling active learning classroom design with simulated clinical immersion experiences for eight weeks. The Motivated Strategies for Learning SelfEfficacy Subscale (MSLQ-SE) questionnaire was applied before and after the intervention. The Survey for Knowledge Acquisition and Application (SKAA) was used post-intervention. The students also provided narrative, open-ended responses regarding their perceptions of the synchronous simulated clinical experiences. Results: The results of the simulated clinical immersions presented an improvement in self-efficacy scores. A one tailed paired t-test presented a significant increase from MSLQ-SE pre-test scores (M = 31.2, SD = 4.8) to MSLQSE post-test scores (M = 32.9, SD = 4.3); (t(33) = -2.1, p = .02). The SKAA results presented that the students perceived that simulated clinical immersions were promoting authentic learning and confidence. Conclusion: The finding of this study is significant to nursing pharmacology education. The online synchronous simulated clinical immersion experiences improved overall self-efficacy scores and provide an authentic teaching approach to connect pharmacology theory to the clinical practice.