The education mission of the army medical department October – December 2010

Introduction: Very little prospective, randomized, experimental research exists on the use of simulation as a teaching method, and no studies have compared the effects of 2 strategies of using the Human Patient Simulator (HPS) and a CD-ROM on the management of patients exposed to chemical agents. Methods: A prospective, pretest-posttest experimental, mixed design (within and between) was used to determine if there were statistically significant differences between educational strategies using HPS, CD-ROM, and a control group in the care of patients exposed to chemical agents. Care was operationally defined as the score on the Management of Chemical Warfare Patients Performance (MCWPP) instrument. Participants included active duty and reserve military nurses (n = 92). They were randomly assigned to one of 3 teaching groups: HPS (n = 30), CD-ROM (n = 31), or a control group (n = 31). Results: Analysis of variance and a Tukey post-hoc test were used to analyze the data. The means on MCWPP instrument were as follows: HPS (pretest: mean =65.13, SD ±8.9; posttest mean =73.0, SD± 8.6); CD-ROM (pretest: mean =67.74, SD±11.18, posttest mean =65.67, SD ±10.82); control (pretest: mean =68.51 SD ±8.5; posttest mean=62.6, SD ±8.6). There were no significant differences between the groups on the pretest (P =.363), but there were significant differences on the posttest (P =.001). Post-hoc analyses indicated the HPS group performed better than the CD-ROM group (P =.017) and the control group (P =.000). There was no significant difference between the CD-ROM and control groups (P =.485). Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, the HPS is more effective than the CD-ROM in teaching nurses about the care of patients exposed to chemical agents.