Feelings of anxiety, fear, and anguish are commonly reported emotional responses by nursing students during the psychiatric clinical rotation (Cruz Araújo et al., 2022). An array of factors, such as stereotypical views of negative beliefs, fear, and prejudice against individuals who experience psychosis, are linked to the undergraduates' negative emotional responses (Eweida et al., 2024). Interestingly, it was speculated that excessive experience of fear may adversely impact undergraduates' mental mastery to overcome these negative feelings (Balshaw, 2022). Mental mastery is concerned with the undergraduates' capacity to cultivate greater resilience, emotional regulation, and empathic understanding to navigate their training endeavors without experiencing feelings of being overwhelmed and mentally fatigued (Peck, 2023). Emerging evidence highlights that inspiring undergraduate students to become resilient can improve their empathy for patient experiences and respond accordingly (Hammarström et al., 2019; Khedr et al., 2023). Likewise, positive emotions and resilience may create habits of positive thinking that involve empathetic understanding, thereby allowing nursing students to deliver better holistic care to patients (Howick et al., 2024).

For empathy to be enacted effectively, nursing students must be competent to regulate their own emotions whenever faced with the suffering of patients. This implies that student nurses must be able to handle these feelings without being swamped or overwhelmed (Hammarström et al., 2019). As has been theoretically anticipated, if the nurses become overly involved with the patient's anguish, they might feel the urge to flee the scene, avoid the other patients, or lessen their awareness of their suffering. This factor can prevent them from responding compassionately and cause empathic distress and exhaustion (Singer & Klimecki, 2014). On the other side, if the students have an objective view and understanding of patients’ suffering, it will enforce an open communication channel and ensure patients' trust (Rydenlund et al., 2019).

A growing body of research has identified that nursing students' empathy towards individuals who experience psychosis somewhat declines during academic education (Ferri et al., 2017; Ward et al., 2012). Empathy is a teachable competency that is of value to students in the last years of their academic education (Richardson et al., 2015). Scientific studies recommended the need to implement educational interventions to improve nursing students' attitudes, resilience, and empathy toward individuals who experience psychosis (Ferri et al., 2017; Praharaj et al., 2021). Since academic staff who are specialized in psychiatric and mental health nursing are considered a reference and focal point in reflecting upon, containing, and regulating their students' emotional upheaval (Abraham & Palleschi, 2018). There is a tremendous need to consider more reasonable methods to help undergraduates pass through the clinical psychiatry experience with ease and effectiveness.

Experiential learning experiences that sustain competency must be included in the psychiatric nursing curricula to warrant a practical emphasis on the undergraduates' educational and clinical competency. Indeed, nursing education has been affected by advancements in scientific knowledge and modern technology in recent years (Vandali & Research, 2017). Cinematic simulation is deemed one of the innovative educational tactics that moves in this direction and should be strategically embedded into the psychiatric and mental health curriculum (Sheridan & Williams, 2022). Movies and cinema have long played a role in academic education, from exhibiting video snippets to watching full movies to help participants learn different terms and concepts (Zauderer & Ganzer, 2011). In this regard, watching movies would help the undergraduates feel less anxious and afraid; in part, they would become more resilient and empathetic in caring for individuals who experience psychosis.

Video-based pedagogy facilitates observation and imparts knowledge because students may find it more engaging. Besides, it stimulates reflective discussion related to themes of patient-centered care (Krumm et al., 2022). According to social learning theory, learning can simply occur through observation, imitation, and modeling of the behavior of others (Bandura, 1977). Albert Bandura proposes that behavior can be directly developed through social interactions with others or indirectly by observing behaviors through social media platforms. From Bandura's perspective, exposure to visualized representations of feared scenarios can lessen avoidance behavior and mitigate feelings of fear. As a result, exposing students to video cases depicting different clinical encounters with patients who experience psychosis may help them regulate their emotions and modify how they approach and behave toward patients (Bandura, 2001). In a study conducted by Pedersen et al. (2019), video cases helped fourth-year medical students score better in patient-centeredness in psychiatry than students receiving a traditional lecture.

Bandura also accounts for the crucial influence of various social media settings, including television and movies, on shaping human behaviors. By considering that media draws individuals' attention to the characters' behavior in movies, the individual becomes fully immersed in this world to capture the whole image and mold his or her behavior accordingly (Bandura, 2001). Videos can alter public opinions on specific issues and normalize or stigmatize certain behaviors and attitudes (Kubrak, 2020). For instance, the media portrayals of people with mental illness (MI) frequently skew toward stigmatization or trivialization. Unlike other illnesses, movies depicted people with MI as byproducts of violent and unpredictable behaviors or even as being “possessed.” This false stereotypical reflection might impact viewers' attitudes and engender harsh, adverse beliefs toward people with MI (Eweida et al., 2023; Perciful et al., 2017).

In accordance with the early anecdotal reflections and the need for more psychiatric mental health pedagogical tactics (Sheridan & Williams, 2022), the researchers called for conducting a new approach to simulation in this study, termed cinematic simulation. We sought to ensure that by implementing such an educational modality, more rigorous findings on the cinematic simulation would be delivered, thereby addressing this knowledge gap.