Distance learning in clinical education of nursing, midwifery, and operating room technology students: A narrative review

With the advent of information technology, educational systems changed accordingly, and the need for revisiting traditional teaching methods and using new learning methods have been felt by educational system planners. Since nearly half of the time medical students spend in university is devoted to clinical education, this education is of paramount importance. Therefore, by using relevant keywords, various interventional, descriptive, and review studies on distance learning in clinical education of nursing, midwifery and operating room technology students that were conducted in English or Persian and published in the scientific databases such as science direct, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, SID, Elsevier, Google Scholar, and Magiran between 2000-2020 were searched. The articles which met the inclusion criteria were selected and assessed. The findings of these articles showed that the use of different distance learning methods has a special role in improving the clinical skills of nursing, midwifery and operating room technology students. When combined with face-to-face training, e-learning can have a positive effect on promoting students' clinical skills and competence. Of course, further studies with more accurate methods are needed to improve the quality of these methods and prove their effectiveness.