This study was conducted to determine whether the addition of high-fidelity patient simulation to new nurse orientation enhanced critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills. A pretest-posttest design was used to assess critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills in two groups of graduate nurses. Compared with the control group, the high-fidelity patient simulation group did not show significant improvement in mean critical thinking or clinical decision-making scores. When mean scores were analyzed, both groups showed an increase in critical thinking scores from pretest to posttest, with the high-fidelity patient simulation group showing greater gains in overall scores. However, neither group showed a statistically significant increase in mean test scores. The effect of high-fidelity patient simulation on critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills remains unclear.

Medication administration is an essential nursing competency as calculation difficulties can lead to serious medication errors. Nurses involved in staff education need to be aware of methods to assess for computation difficulty and develop strategies for nurses to improve their computation abilities. The purposes of this quasi-experimental pilot study were to assess the medication calculation skills of nurses and nursing students and to determine the effectiveness of teaching strategies aimed at improving these skills.

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