Abstract
BACKGROUND: Applying new methods of clinical education seems to provide nursing students with educational opportunities. The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of training through demonstration, video display, and virtual social space on the learning of clinical skills among nursing students. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this semi-experimental research with posttest that was performed in 2019, thirty nursing students of the seventh semester were randomly assigned to three groups of demonstration, video display, and the social virtual space education with ten people in each group. The research was conducted in the hemodialysis ward of university hospitals. Each group was trained and evaluated during 10 days with 5-h sessions continuously. Participants' skills were evaluated using eight self-made, valid and reliable checklists, and the three groups were compared. For data analysis such as the means and standard deviations and inferential statistics, Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal-Wallis likelihood-ratio, and Chi-squared test in SPSS version 16 were used. RESULTS: The results indicated that practical skill levels in the group of virtual social network were significantly higher than the two groups of video display (P = 0.045) and demonstration (P = 0.03). In addition, the group of virtual space had significantly higher scores than those of the other two groups only in two skills of "prime" and "disconnecting the patients from the machine" (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Proper use of networks and social virtual space for clinical training, along with conventional methods of learning, provides good learning opportunities and is affordable in terms of time, cost, and process.