Standard Patient Simulation in Nursing Students' Approach Toward Patients With Bipolar Disorder

An Examination of the Education Based on Standard Patient Simulation in Nursing Students' Approach Toward Patients With Bipolar Disorder: Randomized Controlled Research

The study was conducted to determine the effect of the simulation method with the participation of standardized patients towards the patients suffering from bipolar disorder to benefit the education of the psychiatry nursing students.

The Research Questions

1. Does the use of simulation training with the standardized patients have any effect on the average scores of the fear and behavioral intentions of the students as they approach patients with bipolar disorder?
2. Does the use of simulation training with the standardized patients have any effect on the average scores of the communication skills assessment scale of the students as they approach patients with bipolar disorder?
3. Does the use of simulation training with the standardized patients have any effect on the average scores of the state and trait anxiety level of the students as they approach patients with bipolar disorder?
4. Does the use of simulation training with the standardized patients have any effect on the average scores of the clinical decision making in the nursing scale of the students as they approach patients with bipolar disorder?
5. Does the use of simulation training with the standardized patients have any effect on the average scores of the self-efficacy - sufficiency scale of the students as they approach patients with bipolar disorder?

The students of the Department of Nursing in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ankara's Yıldırım Beyazıt University during the 2017-2018 academic year constitute the research universe. The research universe was randomly selected from the students who voluntarily accepted to participate in the research and met the research criteria. The Minitab software was used to calculate samples and 99% confidence interval with type 1 error 0.05 was accepted. A 0.5 score difference of the anxiety scale was accepted as a success and a sample of 76 students with 38 in the experimental and 38 in the control group was agreed upon. This calculation was based on the change in the anxiety scale score after the simulation education in Kameg et al.'s 2014 study. The power analysis at the end of the study indicated that the scale's average scores ranged between 0.56-0.98. Foreign national students were not included in the study in order to generate a common language. 83 students who will be trainees in the psychiatric clinics and community mental health centers (CMHC) were included in the study and constituted the experimental and control groups. Female and male students were ranked from the highest to the lowest by their academic success scores, and random numbers were assigned in excel to randomly divide these ranked students among the groups. This randomization procedure was done in class. Numbers greater than 0.5 were assigned to the experimental group and numbers lower than 0.5 were assigned to the control group.

Before the study began, two students whose clinical practice locations had changed and two students who were absent in the theoretical class were excluded from the study, and 79 students were divided into two groups as 40 students for the experimental and 39 students for the control group. In the experimental group, 2 students who were absent in the simulation practice and one student who did not properly fill out the data collection form were excluded from the study. In the control group, two students who did not want to fill out the data collection form were also excluded from the study. The study was completed with 37 students from experimental group and 37 from the control group - 74 individuals in total.

Data Evaluation The research data was evaluated in SPSS 22.0 statistical software as appropriate to the quality of the data and research. Normality analysis was conducted by Kolmogorov Smirnov, Shapiro-Wilk, skewness and kurtosis values.

To evaluate the impact size of the education program, variance analysis was used in the repeating assessment. In this study, the impact size of the education was found 1.45≤, and evaluated as very high levels.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Volunteer Students

Exclusion Criteria:

• Foreign National Students