Perception of nursing students from UNIBE and UNASA on clinical simulation as an alternative to achieve learning objectives, during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 brought many changes in higher education, including the suspension of practices in real scenarios for health career students. This challenged teachers to take clinical simulation as an alternative to continue developing practices with their students. This article exposes the experience of nursing students at the University of Ibero-America (UNIBE) of Costa Rica and the Autonomous University of Santa Ana (UNASA) of El Salvador; through the results of a research with a qualitative, phenomenological, descriptive and transversal methodological design, for which the following question was raised: What is the perception of students about the use of clinical simulation to achieve learning objectives during the pandemic? Among the main results of this study, it was obtained that the UNASA students considered that clinical simulation is an effective learning strategy and that it was used according to the objectives presented by the teachers, however, the UNIBE students reported that they did not in all cases the simulation replaces real practice and in some cases the objectives were not socialized, causing some difficulties.