Innovation of educational wound models for nursing students

Abstract

Background: A clinical skills laboratory enhances nursing skills that can be translated to real professional practice.  However, effective laboratory learning material that facilitates learners to achieve learning objectives may be inadequate in resource-limited settings.  This study aimed to develop models for practicing wound dressing changes and to evaluate the quality of the model and user satisfaction.

Methods: The study was conducted in three phases: 1) preparing for model development, 2) model development, and 3) evaluation of the quality of the model and user satisfaction.  Convenience sampling was employed to recruit both recruited both nursing instructors and nursing students, 30, 10 and 271 participants in the first, second, and third phases, respectively.  Focus group discussions were performed to gain ideas and opinions for developing the models.  A Likert scale questionnaire was used to evaluate the quality of the model and user satisfaction.

Results: The developed wound models were made from silicone.  The quality evaluation form determined that the developed models had higher overall quality than those previous models available in nursing laboratory center.  User satisfaction with the developed models was high.  The overall mean (SD) of user satisfaction toward the developed closed-wound model and open-wound model were 3.41 (0.72) and 3.44 (0.71), respectively.

Conclusions: The developed wound models are potentially useful and user friendly, and could be easily available in settings of education with limited resources.  Encouraging the students to use these models may help to enhance self-directed learning and clinical skills for application of wound dressings.