A single-centre, prospective, controlled study (24 critical care nurses, two adult patients) was included in the review. The quality of the study was considered high (scoring 7 out of 9 on the appraisal tool).
Simulation-based education significantly reduced medication administration error rates from 30.8% to 4.0% at one to four weeks post-intervention, and continued decreasing to 6.2% at the final observation (both p<0.001). By comparison, traditional lecturing significantly increased medication administration error rates from 20.8% to 36.7% at the final observation (p=0.002).
Mean quiz scores significantly improved after both simulation-based training (p<0.001) and traditional lecturing (p=0.002) but the difference between the two interventions was not statistically significant (p=0.33).