Abstract
BACKGROUND: Critical care nurses require adequate thinking skills to assess the condition of acutely-ill patients, make decisions, and implement appropriate interventions. Specifically, precise knowledge and swift response to mechanical ventilation-related nursing are of utmost importance. Educational needs of clinical nurses revealed a high demand for education in mechanical ventilation nursing. This study aims to develop a chatbot educational program for self-directed learning to enhance nursing students' skills and assess its impact on clinical reasoning competency, mechanical ventilation nursing-related knowledge, self-confidence, and education satisfaction. METHODS: This study employed a randomized controlled trial with a pretest-posttest parallel group design. The participants included fourth-year nursing students from the Department of Nursing at a university in the "G" province in South Korea, with 31 participants in the experimental group and 29 in the control group. The experimental group had access to the Uniform Resource Locator or URL of the mechanical ventilation nursing chatbot educational program and video lectures, while the control group received only the video lectures. RESULTS: The experimental group demonstrated statistically significantly higher clinical reasoning competency (t=-5.00, p <.001), self-confidence (t=-2.62, p =.011), and satisfaction in education (t=-3.51, p <.001) compared to the control group. However, there was no statistically significant difference in knowledge (t=-0.09, p =.926). CONCLUSIONS: The chatbot educational program could be an effective educational method to positively influence nursing students' clinical reasoning competency, self-confidence, and education satisfaction. It can enhance self-directed learning among nursing students and effectively improve nursing competency. CLINICAL TRIAL NUMBER: Not applicable.