2026 Theses Doctoral

Effect of Interactive Gaming Instruction on SBAR Verbal Reporting in Senior BSN Nursing Students

Djiovanis, Sotos G.

Situation, background, assessment, and recommendation (SBAR) reporting is a method of concise, factual clinical communication that nursing students should develop for future work in clinical settings. Simulations that replicate these clinical settings often evaluate SBAR reporting performance. Self-efficacy and anxiety are factors that have been measured before and after nursing simulations. Interactive gaming instruction is established as a method that engages today’s learners, routinely resulting in knowledge retention that is superior to standard teaching methods.

All of these elements are seen in the existing literature, but very few studies have combined them. A quasi-experimental, comparison group study was conducted to evaluate the effects of interactive gaming instruction on SBAR reporting performance in senior-level, BSN nursing students. Students in the intervention group participated in interactive gaming instruction on SBAR using handheld, screen-based devices. The Materia™ gaming system was used to deliver the content, and required users to respond to both video and written prompts. Participants in the comparison group experienced standard video-based teaching on SBAR, which included captioning. Self-efficacy, state anxiety, and participants’ demographic characteristics were assessed in the pretest survey. All participants subsequently participated in a senior-level, acute chest pain simulation, and then recorded an SBAR report. Self-efficacy, state anxiety, and SBAR reporting performance were assessed in the posttest survey.

The interactive gaming group had statistically significantly better SBAR reporting performance compared to those who experienced video-based teaching. No participant characteristics were associated with SBAR reporting performance. Both groups had slight, but statistically significant, decreases in self-efficacy from pretest to posttest, and no differences were found for self-efficacy between the gaming group and video group. There was no relationship between self-efficacy and SBAR reporting performance, nor any demographic variable. State anxiety levels rose from pretest to posttest; however, there was no difference in state anxiety changes between gaming and video groups. Mean state anxiety levels were observed at, or near, the moderate range before and after the intervention for the entire study sample. There was no association between state anxiety and SBAR reporting performance.

These findings add to the research that shows increased knowledge retention associated with interactive gaming instruction, relative to standard teaching methods. The findings also add to the research on simulated SBAR reporting and changes in self-efficacy and state anxiety in nursing students. The findings of this study reinforce support for the use of interactive gaming instruction in nursing education to teach SBAR concepts. These findings also support interactive gaming as an acceptable alternative for standard video-based methods for teaching SBAR concepts, where self-efficacy and state anxiety are concerned.