PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Nursing: Nursing - Doctoral Program

Background: Changes in the United States (US) health care delivery system require more advanced nursing education and training to prepare nursing graduates for their leading role. Acute care nurse practitioners (ACNP) play a vital role in hospitals and critical care settings. ACNPs require special training and educational preparation to meet their role expectations such as leading a cardiovascular resuscitation team. Using high fidelity simulation (HFS) with debriefing modalities is considered one of the innovative learning strategies in graduate nursing which provide the opportunity to practice their leadership capabilities within safe, nonthreatening learning environment. Purposes: The purpose of this study was to examine the difference in ACNP students' knowledge, team leader skills and self-efficacy using two debriefing modalities: verbal debriefing (VD) vs. video-assisted debriefing (VAD) guided by Kolb's experiential learning theory (ELT). Additionally, this study explored ACNP students' evaluation and perceptions of the debriefing experience and how this experience impacts the transferability of simulation-based learning into clinical settings. Method: A two group, pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used. This study was conducted in two phases. Phase I was quantitative and Phase II included qualitative data collection using two focus group interviews. A total 28 ACNP students were recruited from an acute care nurse practitioner program or post master's acute care certificate program at a university in the Midwest United States during the fall of 2017. ACNP students participated in HFS scenario managing emergency dysrhythmias during a code experience. Then the students were evaluated using many tools followed by two focus group interviews. Results: There were no significant differences between the two groups in knowledge acquisition/retention, leadership skills, and self-efficacy, but there was a significant difference in self-efficacy in both (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elaine Miller Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Tamilyn Bakas (Committee Member); Kathleen Ballman (Committee Member); Gary Geis (Committee Member); Jun Ying Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Nursing