Changes in Subjective Understanding of an Accident and Risk Awareness in First-Year Nursing Students Following Medical Accident Simulation-Based Experimental Learning

Novice nurses with little professional experience tend to feature frequently in reported medical accidents and near-miss incidents in Japanese healthcare facilities. According to our previous survey, approximately 40% to 70% of nursing students experience near-miss incidents during their clinical training. Many of these incidents in nursing settings occur while providing assistance for wheelchair transfer or bathing. Fostering observational skills to enable accurate risk area identification is a requirement from the stage of basic education for the provision of safe medical care to patients. In the present study, we devised and implemented experimental learning aimed at first-year nursing students that incorporated medical accident reenactments and simulations using simulated patients. The results showed significant post-learning increases in both subjective understanding and the frequency of risk area identification, suggesting that experimental learning improves nursing student comprehension and skill in responding to perceived risks.