Impact of Using a Robot Patient for Nursing Skill Training in Patient Transfer

In the past few decades, simulation training has been used to help nurses improve their patient-transfer skills. However, the effectiveness of such training remains limited because it lacks effective ways of simulating patients’ actions realistically. It is difficult for nurses to use the skills learned from simulation training to transfer an actual patient. Therefore, we developed a robot patient that could simulate the behavior of patients’ limbs for patient-transfer training. This study examined the performance of the robot used in training and evaluated its training effectiveness. Four nursing teachers individually transferred the robot patient and then scored the robot patient's ability to simulate patients’ actions and its suitability for skill training. An experiment using pre-post control group design was carried out to examine the robot patient's training effectiveness compared with the human simulated patient. The participants were 20 nursing students and one nursing teacher who was responsible for scoring the students’ skills in the pre-test and post-test. All of the students were assigned to train with either the proposed robot patient or a healthy person simulating the patient. The results show that all four nursing teachers regarded the robot patient's actions as realistic. In addition, all four teachers agreed that the robot patient was suitable for skill training. The results also show that the proposed robot patient is more challenging than the current method, which employs a healthy person to simulate the patient. Significant skill improvement (p < 0.01) was observed in the experimental group when transferring the robot patient.