Performance based situation awareness observations in a simulated clinical scenario pre and post an educational intervention.

This study compared final year nursing students' error rate and use of strategies to maintain SA when undertaking specific nursing care in a simulated clinical environment pre and 10 weeks post a planned SA education intervention. Students were observed using a Performance Based Situation Awareness Observation Schedule (PBSAOS) undertaking two tasks in a simulated clinical environment pre and post the SA education. For task 1, post educational intervention, there was no significant increase in the error rate for any performance measures, and there were significant decreases in the error rates for three performance measures. For task 2, post educational intervention, there was a significant decrease in the error rate for two measures and a significant increase in the error rates for seven performance measures. In considering the overall group error rate when excluding uncompleted tasks, there was a significant (x = .0001) decrease in the error rate for task 1 post educational intervention (41.4% compared to 26.6%), and significant (x = 0.01) increase in the error for task 2 post educational intervention (39.6% compared to 47.3%). The findings of this study demonstrate that the implementation of an intervention designed to increase SA actually appear to have resulted in hyper-vigilance and subsequent non-completion of required tasks.