Response to Nursing Students’ Satisfaction and Self-Confidence with Simulation-Based Learning and Its Associations with Simulation Design Characteristics and Educational Practices [Letter]

Dear editor

After reading the research from Saoussen Bdiri Gabbouj, et al¹ entitled Nursing Students’ Satisfaction and Self-Confidence with Simulation-Based Learning it is stated that this makes a significant contribution in strengthening the argument about the importance of simulation in building a more skilled nursing workforce.

An in-depth analysis revealed several shortcomings of the study, such as the sampling method using convenience sampling, which can lead to selection bias and reduce the ability to generalize results to a wider population, as well as the study being conducted at only one regional university in Tunisia, which limits the representation of results to the global or even broader regional context of nursing education. In sampling, it is better to be representative, it must have the same characteristics as the population as written by Agussalim² in a publication in the journal of asthma and allergy. This was written by Agussalim, et al³ in another paper that study participants were drawn from multiple hospitals in a single region, which limited the generalization of outcomes to a wider population or to different geographic locations and potential for bias in outcome assessment.

Another weakness found was that there was no control group. The study did not involve a control group with other teaching methods, making it difficult to determine how effective the simulation was compared to other teaching approaches. An article by Agussalim, et al³ said that strictly control external variables, increase participant diversity, and more objective assessment methods will improve the results of a study’s elaboration. Next is the short duration of the study where data collection is carried out in a short time, so it is not possible to evaluate the long-term impact of learning-based simulations. Research with a long duration will increase the quantity and quality of research as stated by Masaki Tago et al.⁴