The Effects of Nursing Students Participating in a Operating Room Simulation

Entering an unfamiliar, complex, fast-paced, unpredictable perioperative environment can be frightening and intimidating to any newcomer, especially as an inexperienced nursing student. When nursing students are better prepared prior to arriving into their Operating Room (OR) for clinical, theoretically they should have a decreased anxiety while improving their overall experience and perception (Byrne, Root, & Culbertson, 2016; Foran, 2015). In nursing curricula there is a limited amount of time spent discussing the perioperative setting (Helzer Doroh & Monahan, 2016; Motts, 2012). Nursing student’s first impression of any nursing specialty is during their clinical rotation. Their experience whether it be a positive or negative one, will impact their decision on choosing a specialty post-graduation (Helzer Doroh & Monahan, 2016). By implementing an operating room simulation prior to clinical experience will give the nursing students an opportunity to become more knowledgeable with the perioperative setting and increase their sense of preparedness, overall perception and experience of the OR. Keywords: Simulation, Operating Room, nursing students Study Purpose: To examine and evaluate the effectiveness of nursing students participating an OR simulated experience prior to attending their OR clinical experience. Particularly, investigating the effectiveness of nursing student’s knowledge of the OR environment, sense of preparedness, overall perception and experience of the OR