The Effect of Digital-Based Simulation on Physiotherapy Students

Overview

In physiotherapy and rehabilitation education, basic medical courses, clinical information, rehabilitation approaches, special teachings of the profession, clinical problem solving and analysis in their fields are taught during university education. Musculoskeletal problems will be selected for the patient scenarios to be used in the simulation and algorithms will be arranged for the simulation. After the algorithms are created, a website with patient scenarios containing these algorithms will be established with the support of a software company. In addition to the website, a database will be created and the applications made on the site will be recorded. In our study, stepped wedge design will be used. 100 volunteer students participating in the study will start face-to-face training after preliminary evaluations are made. Afterwards, every two weeks, a randomized group of 20 people will be included in the hybrid training, which includes both face-to-face and simulation training. In the face-to-face education group, the educational content prepared in parallel with the patient scenarios in the hybrid education group will be applied in the classroom environment by the students together with the educators themselves. In the hybrid training group, one case analysis will be done every week on the website designed under the supervision of researchers, and one case analysis will be done through face-to-face training. The self-efficacy and clinical reasoning levels of the students included in the study will be evaluated with the Physiotherapist Self-Efficacy Questionnaire and the Clinical Reasoning Assessment Tool. The same evaluations will be repeated after the students in both groups have completed their 10-week education. Afterwards, students' satisfaction levels and suggestions from the simulation will be evaluated with qualitative questions, and opinions and suggestions about simulation will be collected by creating themes.

Clinical reasoning is one of the most fundamental skills in health professions education and is essential for engaging in clinical practice. In many studies, it is stated that the learning of the clinical reasoning process in undergraduate students should be included in the curricula and learning objectives. Self-efficacy is a concept that is effective in shaping one's behavior. Academic self-efficacy is the individual's belief in himself about how successful he will be in the face of the academic tasks he will face throughout his academic life and at what level he can fulfill these tasks. In recent years, digital learning designs have been increasingly used in teaching practices in higher education. Various designs offer opportunities to improve self-regulation abilities, facilitate active learning, and make the learning process more transparent. It covers a variety of technologies such as digital learning designs, virtual reality, podcasts, apps, educational games, 360° video and animations. These technologies can be applied directly in learning activities or combined with other planned learning activities. In studies, digital learning designs in physiotherapy education have been criticized because they are not based on a theoretical learning perspective. A systematic review on the role of computer-assisted learning in physiotherapy education concluded that it has been substantially less researched compared to other health professions education.