Safe Drug Administration in Pediatric Nursing Education: A Quasi-Experimental Design Study

Abstract

Objective: This study was carried out to determine the correlation between the performance of students who received simulation-based pediatric nursing education and their self-confidence regarding safe drug administrations during simulation. Methods: The study was conducted in pretest and posttest quasi-experimental design and carried out on a sample group (n = 39) based on criteria established at the Nursing Department of a foundation university. Students were subjected to a simulation of "Drug Management in Children" within the scope of the pediatric nursing course. The researchers collected data through a checklist, a self-confidence scale, and tests (pretest and posttest) used in the simulation application on "Drug Management in Children." Results: The students obtained a mean score of 129.00 +/- 14.36 on the self-confidence scale. The posttest scores of the students were statistically significantly higher than the pretest scores (P = .011). The performance mean score of the students from the simulation checklist for safe drug administrations was 36.28 +/- 6.65. There was no statistically significant correlation between the scores from the self-confidence scale, the pretest, the posttest, and the checklist scores (P > .05). Conclusion: This study underlines the importance of having a suitable level of self-confidence for students' educational gains and also indicated that there was no correlation between self-confidence and performance.