Available online 29 March 2024

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Concept mapping has been found to facilitate learning of nursing students.

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When concept mapping is used in simulation within nursing education, students demonstrate active learning, improved skill performance and report enhanced psychological safety.

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When used as a prebriefing or debriefing activity in simulation, the use of concept mapping enhances the student experience of learning.

AbstractBackground

The use of concept maps in simulation has been found to facilitate learning of nursing students. There is a need to understand how concept mapping can be used to best facilitate student learning within simulation experiences. The goal of this scoping literature review was to find out what is known about the context, processes and outcomes of concept mapping in simulation within nursing education.

Method

This scoping review used the Joanna Briggs Institute guidance for conducting scoping reviews. The participants, concept, and context format were used to develop the search strategy, which used five electronic databases to find relevant papers for data extraction.

Results

Fourteen studies met the eligibility criteria for this literature review. The themes identified were active learning, performance of skills, psychological safety, and using concept maps as an assessment tool.

Conclusion

This review demonstrates that there is clear evidence that concept mapping plays an important role in nursing students’ critical thinking and active learning and is associated with improving feelings of safety for students.

Section snippetsBackground

Nursing education has used simulation since at least the late 19th century. The earliest forms of simulation such as role play and standardized patients are still used today. Over the last 30 years, we have seen the growth of high-fidelity simulation which involves the use of programmable mannequins. More recently, we have seen the rise of virtual computerized simulation, including the use of virtual gaming simulation. Simulation experiences are designed to be like the clinical setting in which

Method

This scoping review used the Arksey and O'Malley framework to complete the scoping review (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). In addition, this review used the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) (Tricco et al., 2018) and the Joanna Briggs Institute guidance for conducting scoping reviews (Peters et al., 2015). The scoping review protocol was registered with the Open Science Framework (link to be inserted here) (Innis et al., 2023).

Search Strategy

Relevant studies were identified using the Cumulative Index to Nursing Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), EMBASE, PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and ERIC electronic databases. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to filter studies published between January 1992 and September 2022. The year 1992 was chosen as the start date as this is the first time a nursing study that used concept mapping was published (Daley et al., 2016; Kinchin, 2015).

The participants, concept, and context (PCC) format was used

Search Results and Study Characteristics

The literature search and identification of papers are found in Figure 1. The papers included seven quantitative, four qualitative, two mixed method studies, and one historical literature review. Most of the studies were American (n = 9), with the remaining five studies from France, Korea, Taiwan, Finland, and Canada. Of the 13 interventional studies (not including the literature review), eight took place in baccalaureate programs, and five took place in associate degree or diploma programs in

Discussion

Overall, the use of concept mapping in simulation within nursing education was found to enhance students’ active learning and understanding of course material (Daley et al., 2017; Odreman & Clyens, 2020; Lin et al., 2022; O'Halloran et al., 2022; Samawi et al., 2014; Smith et al., 1992). One of the factors that may have played a role in this is that students who created concept maps may have received more attention from instructors. For example, Smith et al., (1992) found that students who

Conclusion

The study of the use of concept maps in simulation within nursing education is a relatively new area of study. Of the limited number of studies carried out in this area, the majority have been carried out in the past 10 years. This review demonstrates that there is clear evidence that concept mapping plays an important role in nursing students’ critical thinking and active learning and is associated with improving feelings of safety for students, which helps students to learn together in

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing personal relationships or financial interests that may have influenced the study reported in this paper.

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