Effect of applying blended clinical teaching strategies on nursing student’s achievement of abdominal examination in pregnancy

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the effect of applying blended clinical teaching strategies on nursing student’s achievement of abdominal examination in pregnancy. Methods: A quasi-experimental research design was implemented on a purposive sample of 105 students registered in the maternity nursing course, Mansoura University, Egpyt. The participants were assigned to the comparison group; who were subjected to the conventional clinical demonstration, the video demonstration group who watched a video clip about the procedure of abdominal examination in pregnancy, or to the blended teaching group, who received both teaching methods. Four tools were used in data collection. Assessment sheet for demographics, student’s knowledge and performance were evaluated by Multiple Choice Questions test and performance checklist respectively, while a self-rating scale was used for confidence in clinical performance and satisfaction with the teaching method. Results: Immediately post-intervention, the blended teaching group had the highest knowledge score compared to the clinical demonstration and video demonstration groups (33.8 ± 1.8 vs. 30.3 ± 1.9 and 24.5 ± 2.8 respectively, p < .001), and 38.0 ± 3.1 vs. 33.0 ± 1.2 and 28.0 ± 2.4 at 2 weeks evaluation and had the highest performance scores (7.8 ± 0.9 and 9.1 ± 0.8, p < .001) immediately and at 2 weeks post-intervention respectively. Similarly, the blended teaching group had the highest confidence in clinical performance and satisfaction with the teaching strategies scores in comparison to the other two groups post-intervention (8.9 ± 0.9 and 9.4 ± 0.5 respectively; p < .001). Conclusions: The study hypotheses were accepted, where blending the video demonstration with the conventional demonstration was an effective strategy for improving the knowledge and clinical performance scores, as well as increasing the confidence in clinical performance and satisfaction with the teaching strategy.