title: The construction and evaluation of new educational software for nursing diagnoses: a randomized controlled trial.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Student nurses often have difficulties with diagnostic inferences. To achieve high accuracy nursing diagnoses, effective learning strategies are required.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To describe the construction and evaluation of new educational software called Wise Nurse, which was developed to increase the capacity of student nurses to identify nursing diagnoses (NDx) and to establish relationships between NDx, defining characteristics (DC), and related factors (RF).
  
  
  METHODS
  Randomized controlled trial.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 2nd to 4th year student nurses from an undergraduate program at a university in Brazil. Of the 47 recruited students, 37 completed the survey.
  
  
  METHODS
  Students were randomly assigned to test the software (experimental group) and to solve printed clinical cases (comparison group). A pretest and post-test were applied before and after the experiment. Statistical analyses of the students' performance in the tests were conducted. The primary outcome was the students' progress in solving questions and clinical cases regarding NDx. The System Usability Scale was used to measure the software's ease of use.
  
  
  RESULTS
  No significant difference was found between the experimental and comparison groups before and after the experiment. The average students' performance in identifying RF and NDx was higher than in identifying DC. The post-test score was higher than the pretest score in both groups (P=0.022). The usability score was good (average score 83.75, N=20).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The use of Wise Nurse supported an improvement in student diagnostic reasoning equivalent to that of the traditional NDx training, but the software stands out as an innovative teaching tool.
authors.affiliation: Nursing Department, Federal University of Ceará, 1115 Alexandre Barauna St., Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. Electronic address: vanessaemille@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Vanessa E C
authors.initials: VE
authors.lastname: Sousa
authors.affiliation: Nursing Department, Federal University of Ceará, 1115 Alexandre Barauna St., Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. Electronic address: marcos@ufc.br.
authors.forename: Marcos V O
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Lopes
authors.affiliation: Nursing Department, Federal University of Ceará, 1115 Alexandre Barauna St., Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. Electronic address: gabrielelima@msn.com.
authors.forename: Gabriele L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.affiliation: Nursing Department, Federal University of Ceará, 1115 Alexandre Barauna St., Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. Electronic address: camiladiniz.enf@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Camila M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Diniz
authors.affiliation: Nursing Department, Federal University of Ceará, 1115 Alexandre Barauna St., Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. Electronic address: nathaly.bmf@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Nathaly B M
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Froes
authors.affiliation: Nursing Department, Federal University of Ceará, 1115 Alexandre Barauna St., Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. Electronic address: bianka_alves@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Bianca A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Sobreira
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004506:Education, Nursing / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009733:Nursing Diagnosis; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Nursing diagnosis; Nursing informatics; Nursing students; Problem-based learning