Abstract

Background: Mental rehearsal is a form of training used by nurse educators to enhance the performance of clinical skills. The use of imagination may facilitate cognitive and affective modification and subsequently may even reduce extraneous cognitive load. Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate the efficacy of mental rehearsal in cardiopulmonary resuscitation training of nursing students. Methods: This is a comparative study with a random sample of 52 Nurse-Assistant students who were randomly divided into two groups. A 10-minute educational video on CPR and defibrillation was shown to both groups with the experimental group having additional time to be coached on mental rehearsal. Student performance was subsequently timed and errors/overall performance recorded. Descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney test was used for group comparisons analysis. Results: Students in the control group needed 8.5 minutes on average as compared to 6.2 minutes for the experimental group to complete cardiopulmonary resuscitation training. This equals to a difference of 2.5 minutes faster time for the experimental group (p

Key words: Nursing, Mental Rehearsal, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Defibrillate.