The effect of Flipped Classroom through Near Peer Education (FC through NPE) on patient safety knowledge retention in nursing and midwifery students: a solomon four-group design

INTRODUCTION: Selecting an appropriate teaching methodology is one of the key stages in education. This study is an attempt to delve into the effect of FC through NPE on patient safety knowledge retention in nursing and midwifery students. METHODS: A randomized controlled trial, using the Solomon design, was conducted in 2019 on 82 nursing and midwifery students enrolled from Bushehr nursing and midwifery school. The Subjects were then allocated to four groups via block randomization. The Subjects in both intervention groups studied the educational content online for 2 weeks and subsequently attended the FC through NPE. Both control groups merely received education based on conventional method. The post-test was once administered to the four study groups immediately after completing the program and once again 2 months after it. RESULTS: The posttest mean scores of knowledge retention in both intervention groups remained the same (P = 0.1), while they were higher in the control groups (P < 0.05). The changes in the mean scores of the post-test in the intervention and follow-up groups did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the four study groups (P = 0.130, F = 1.941). CONCLUSION: The use of the FC through NPE increased the knowledge mean scores; however, it failed to affect knowledge retention. Given the infancy of this pedagogical approach, further studies are needed to investigate its effects on various learning outcomes.