Home Visit Simulation-based Earthquake Preparedness Training for Nursing Students

Overview

In earthquake preparedness, nurses, who constitute the largest group among healthcare professionals, are expected to play an active role. Public health nurses, with their population-focused protection philosophy, are at the forefront of managing the earthquake preparedness phase. Public health nurses play an active role in practices such as providing health education through home visits, identifying household risks and taking preventive measures, and organizing drills. In this context, nurses need to have sufficient knowledge and skills to take appropriate interventions. However, managing an effective preparedness process is not limited to knowledge and skills alone; it also requires the development of nurses' attitudes and beliefs towards disasters. Therefore, it is of great importance that nursing students graduate with positive attitudes and strong beliefs about earthquake preparedness, in addition to their knowledge and skills. However, developing these skills necessitates the use of experiental learning-based educational methods instead of traditional teaching methods. Therefore, this study was planned to examine the effect of home visit simulation-based earthquake preparedness training, which offers experiental learning opportunities, on nursing students' communication skills, earthquake awareness, and self-regulated learning skills.

Even if theoretical knowledge of disaster nursing is provided within the scope of public health courses, in a subject requiring the development of complex experiental skills outside of clinical settings, such as disasters, educational methods that support learning by doing are recommended. Simulation-based learning is an educational method that supports nurses in learning and developing skills by experiencing nursing practices through the simulation of basic situations they may encounter in a hospital setting using structured scenarios. However, a systematic review examining studies on simulation-based learning indicates that the vast majority of studies were conducted in hospital-level simulations, and there are very few studies at the community level. Experiential learning is an important component of simulation-based training. Experiential learning emphasizes that learning is not only a mental activity but also includes bodily and emotional processes by integrating individuals' experiences into the learning process. In experiential learning, participants are actors playing a role assigned to them in the scenario. Thus, through the experiences they gain within the structured scenario, participants achieve cognitive, psychomotor, and affective learning objectives, and the learning process gains a holistic quality. There are few community-based studies that directly involve participants in the scenario using simulation-based experiential learning. Therefore, this planned study aims to enable nursing students to achieve cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning objectives in home visit and earthquake preparedness processes by implementing earthquake preparedness training based on home visit simulations through experiential learning. Furthermore, the study aims to improve students' skills in evaluating real-life environments, identifying risks, and implementing protective measures through home visit simulations. The findings are important both for the design of educational programs and for strengthening the role of nurses in community-based disaster response and preparedness processes. Thus, the study aims to provide concrete and applicable suggestions for both academic literature and practical applications. In the 2025-2026 spring semester, fourth-year nursing students taking the public health nursing course were given earthquake preparedness training based on home visit simulations. The scenario was created by the researchers and expert opinions were obtained. Data collection tools were applied for a pre-test before the scenario. The scenario was carried out in stages as two home visits. The first home visit aimed to focus on initiating the home visit, data collection, and in-home risk assessment, while the second home visit aimed to focus on earthquake preparedness health education applications. In the study, communication skills, awareness of earthquake preparedness, and self-regulated learning skills were applied before and after the home visit simulation. The applications were carried out in the Preventive Health Practices Laboratory of the Nursing Department, Faculty of Health Sciences, Duzce University. The laboratory was arranged as a simulation of a home environment consisting of a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The applications were recorded by a recording device in this room. The simulation stages consisted of Briefing, Scenario, and Debriefing. The first home visit was planned to last a maximum of 10 minutes, and the second home visit a maximum of 15 minutes. Analysis sessions were conducted in groups of 10, with each session lasting approximately 30 minutes. Institutional permission was obtained for the research, informed consent was obtained from the students, and permission to use the scales was secured.