Simulation‐based education for novices: complex learning tasks promote reflective practice

作者：Marie‐Laurence Tremblay, Jimmie Leppink, Gilles Leclerc, Jan‐Joost Rethans, Diana Dolmans · 发表于：Medical Education · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1111/medu.13748 · 被引用次数：34 · 研究领域：Simulation-Based Education in Healthcare、Innovations in Medical Education、Clinical Reasoning and Diagnostic Skills

CONTEXT: Simulated clinical immersion (SCI), in which clinical situations are simulated in a realistic environment, safely and gradually exposes novices to complex problems. Given their limited experience, undergraduate students can potentially be quite overwhelmed by SCI learning tasks, which may result in misleading learning outcomes. Although task complexity should be adapted to the learner's level of expertise, many factors, both intrinsic and extraneous to the learning task, can influence perceived task complexity and its impact on cognitive processes. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to understand the effects of task complexity on undergraduate pharmacy students' cognitive load, task performance and perception of learning in SCI. METHODS: A total of 167 second-year pharmacy students were randomly assigned to undertake one simple and one complex learning task in SCI consecutively. Participants' cognitive load was measured after each task and debriefing. Task performance and time on task were also assessed. As part of a sequential explanatory design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with students showing maximal variations in intrinsic cognitive load to elucidate their perceptions of learning when dealing with complexity. RESULTS: Although the complex task generated significantly higher cognitive load and time on task than the simple task, performance was high for both tasks. Qualitative results revealed that a lack of clinical experience, ...