The effect of surgical preference card on the clinical self-efficacy of operating room students

A wide range of clinical education of operating room students is done in the operating room. One of the problems in students' clinical education is the lack of appropriate learning tools in the operating room. The use of educational tools that improve students' performance affects students' self-efficacy in the operating room. So, the purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the surgical preference card as an educational aid tool on the self-efficacy of the operating room students.

 This quasi-experimental study was carried out on 64 operating room students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences at AL-Zahra Hospital in the year 2018. Participates were selected through convenience sampling and were divided into experimental (n=32) and control (n=32) groups. The students in the intervention group performed surgical care with using the surgical preference card. The data collection tool was a clinical self-efficacy questionnaire. Data were analyzed with SPSS-21 software using the independent-t, paired t-test, and chi-square test.

The findings of this study showed that there was no significant difference between the average self-efficacy score of the control group before and after the intervention (p>0.05). while the average self-efficacy score of the experimental group increased significantly after the intervention as compared with before the intervention (p <0.001).

The surgical preference card as an educational aid tool improved the students' self-efficacy. Therefore, it is recommended to use this tool for the clinical education of other operating room students.