title: Effectiveness of patient simulation in nursing education: meta-analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The use of simulation as an educational tool is becoming increasingly prevalent in nursing education, and a variety of simulators are utilized. Based on the results of these studies, nursing facilitators must find ways to promote effective learning among students in clinical practice and classrooms.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To identify the best available evidence about the effects of patient simulation in nursing education through a meta-analysis.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study explores quantitative evidence published in the electronic databases: EBSCO, Medline, ScienceDirect, and ERIC. Using a search strategy, we identified 2503 potentially relevant articles. Twenty studies were included in the final analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found significant post-intervention improvements in various domains for participants who received simulation education compared to the control groups, with a pooled random-effects standardized mean difference of 0.71, which is a medium-to-large effect size. In the subgroup analysis, we found that simulation education in nursing had benefits, in terms of effect sizes, when the effects were evaluated through performance, the evaluation outcome was psychomotor skills, the subject of learning was clinical, learners were clinical nurses and senior undergraduate nursing students, and simulators were high fidelity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results indicate that simulation education demonstrated medium to large effect sizes and could guide nurse educators with regard to the conditions under which patient simulation is more effective than traditional learning methods.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, Soonchunhyang University, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sujin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shin
authors.affiliation: College of Nursing, Research Institue of Nursing Science, Catholic University of Daegu, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jin-Hwa
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, College of Health Sciences, Dankook University, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: jhee90@dankook.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Jung-Hee
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D004506:Education, Nursing; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008348:Manikins; D015402:Nursing Education Research; D016544:Patient Simulation; D000066908:Simulation Training; D013338:Students, Nursing
keywords: Education; Meta-analysis; Nursing; Simulation