Effectiveness of realistic simulation for teaching pulmonary physical examination: randomized clinical trial

Objective: to evaluate effectiveness of realistic clinical simulation for teaching pulmonary physical examination to undergraduate nursing students. Methods: experimental study of pre-test and post-test type applied to randomized intervention and control groups. The sample consisted of 30 students, randomly divided. The analysis was performed using descriptive and inferential statistics, through Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and t-test for independent samples, considering statistical significance p≤0.05. A satisfaction scale validated with the intervention group was applied. Results: we identified increased correct answers in post-test in the intervention group, which was submitted to realistic simulation. In this group, the mean number of errors varied from 4.87 in the pre-test to 2.13 in the post-test. In the control group, students either decreased or maintained the number of correct answers in the post-test, and mean errors increased, from 3.87 in the pre-test to 4.0 in post-test. The difference in correct answers between intervention and control groups was significant (p=0.000). Conclusion: from realistic simulation, students obtained a lower average error rate on post-test. Contributions to practice: results of this research favor the curricular insertion of simulation for teaching pulmonary physical examination in undergraduate nursing.