Prebriefing for high-fidelity simulation in nursing education: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: Briefing, scenario development, and debriefing of high-fidelity simulation (HFS) have been widely discussed in the past, but less attention is given to prebriefing, and its role in learning outcomes. The prebriefing engages students and equips them with the knowledge and skills they need for a successful simulation.

Objectives: To identify the effectiveness of prebriefing of HFS in Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students.

Design: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experiment.

Data sources: The Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, WANFANG, and CNKI were for randomized controlled and quasi-experimental studies published in English or Chinese up to June 26, 2022.

Review methods: Two authors independently screened the literature, extracted data and evaluated the quality of the included studies. The standardized mean difference with a 95 % confidence interval was used to facilitate direct comparisons between studies. All statistical tests were conducted with Review Manager 5.4 software.

Results: This meta-analysis included 17 randomized controlled studies and 25 quasi-experimental studies involving 4926 BSN students. No significant differences in knowledge (p = 0.58), skill (p = 0.67), satisfaction (p = 0.84), critical thinking (p = 0.56), caring (p = 0.11), learning interest (p = 0.85), and self-confidence (p = 0.21) between HFS with and without prebriefing were found in subgroup analyses. HFS with prebriefing generated larger effect for collaboration (0.82 vs 0.27, p = 0.004).

Conclusion: HFS with prebriefing facilitates collaboration of BSN students more effectively, and it has an equivalent effect to HFS without prebriefing on fostering BSN students' knowledge, skills, critical thinking, caring, learning interest, and self-confidence.

Keywords: High-fidelity simulation; Meta-analysis; Prebriefing; Undergraduate nursing students.