Abstract
OBJECTIVES: to assess nursing students' skills in surgical wound care before and after clinical simulation. METHODS: a quasi-experimental before-and-after study was conducted with 50 nursing students at a federal public university. Data collection occurred in three stages: assessment of students'skills before clinical simulation; application of the simulated scenario; assessment of skills after clinical simulation. Data were analyzed using McNemar's test and Cohen's D test. RESULTS: clinical simulation had a positive effect on the development of nursing students' skills in the eight dimensions of the simulated scenario, since most of the items assessed showed a significant increase in students' performance values in the post-simulation moment. CONCLUSIONS: after clinical simulation, there was an improvement in the development of nursing students' skills related to surgical wound care.