Effectiveness of simulation-based education on nursing students’ professional knowledge, attitude and self-confidence in handling child abuse cases

This study aimed to enhance nursing students’ professional knowledge, attitudes and self-confidence in handling child abuse cases through a Child Abuse Simulation-Based Education (CASE). Given that nursing students seldom learn about child abuse case management in textbooks, simulation-based education could assist them in appropriately handling child abuse cases when they become nurses. Using a quasi-experimental design. 190 nurses enrolled in a night school in-service program at a Taiwanese university were recruited for this study. Ninety-four nurses in the experimental group took a simulation-based education on child abuse while 96 nurses in the contrast group took a general nursing course. The pretest and posttest professional knowledge, attitudes and self-confidence of both groups were analyzed using generalized estimating equations in SPSS V22 software. Following the introduction of the CASE course, the experimental group’s posttest professional knowledge, attitudes and self-confidence in handling child abuse cases were higher than those of the contrast group (p