Effectiveness of Clinical Simulation and Peer-Assisted Learning to Teaching About the Sexuality of People With Spinal Cord Injury

BACKGROUND: The sexuality of people with spinal cord injury (SCI) is a subject often neglected by healthcare professionals because of their lack of knowledge or understanding of how to proceed in this context. Different teaching strategies can be used to fill this knowledge gap, such as clinical simulation and peer-assisted learning. This study evaluates the effects of an educational intervention on nursing students' knowledge acquisition about the sexuality of individuals with SCI and on the students' self-confidence and satisfaction with the experience. METHODS: Quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design was conducted with nursing students (N = 54). The intervention was the application by a senior-level nursing student of 2 scenarios of high-fidelity clinical simulation. The primary outcome was the knowledge about the sexuality of people with SCI. The secondary outcome was the satisfaction and self-confidence in learning. We performed descriptive and inferential statistics and built multiple linear regression models. RESULTS: The effect of the intervention on knowledge acquisition ranged from the mean of 1.26 in the pretest to 3.10 in the posttest. The means in the scores of satisfaction and self-confidence were considered excellent and correlated with knowledge acquisition. Previous attendance of a class on SCI positively interfered in the scale of knowledge acquisition. CONCLUSION: We verified an effect size ranging from medium to large magnitude for knowledge acquisition, and great satisfaction and self-confidence in learning through the use of simulated experience and peer-assisted learning.