Development and assessment of a curriculum model for virtual simulation in nursing: curriculum development and pilot-evaluation

BACKGROUND: To introduce virtual simulation as a strategy of nursing education and provide valid educational content, the best curriculum model of virtual simulation needs to be developed. METHODS: Curriculum development process and pilot evaluation was used. The curriculum content and structure was developed by analyzing literature including previous studies and major nursing classification systems, and key words derived from focus group interviews of 14 nurses and 20 faculty members with expertise in simulation education. 35 nursing students participated in the evaluation of the developed virtual simulation curriculum. RESULTS: The curriculum developed for virtual simulation in nursing education contained three domains of content areas: (1) enhancing clinical decision-making, (2) experiencing low-exposed situations, and (3) building professional resilience. In addition, seven subdomains of content areas and 35 representative topics in the virtual simulation curriculum were derived. Scenarios of nine representative topics were created, translated into 3D modeling and pilot-evaluated. CONCLUSIONS: Considering that nursing education is encountering new demands and challenges from students and the changing society, the newly suggested curriculum for virtual nursing simulation can help nurse educators to plan better educational opportunities for students. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-023-04283-4.