Sepsis is a highly complex and life-threatening condition, making early recognition and prompt intervention essential to improving survival outcomes. Nurses play a pivotal role as the first responders in detecting patient deterioration and reporting i...
Sepsis is a highly complex and life-threatening condition, making early recognition and prompt intervention essential to improving survival outcomes. Nurses play a pivotal role as the first responders in detecting patient deterioration and reporting it to physicians; therefore, systematic sepsis education is critical for improving patient outcomes and ensuring safety. However, in clinical practice, nurses often fail to adhere consistently to guidelines or recognize patient deterioration in a timely manner, underscoring the need for education that strengthens both theoretical knowledge and practical competence. Recently, blended learning approaches that integrate high-fidelity simulator(HFS) and virtual reality(VR) simulations have gained increasing attention, yet evidence regarding their effectiveness for clinical nurses remains limited. This study examined the effects and sustainability of blended simulation-based sepsis education on nurses’ knowledge and clinical judgment. A randomized controlled pretest–posttest design was employed with 34 ward nurses who had 2–3 years of clinical experience at a tertiary hospital in Seoul. Participants were randomly assigned to the experimental group, which received blended simulation education, or the control group, which received HFS-based simulation education, with 17 in each group. Education was delivered on the same day, and outcomes were measured at three time points: baseline pre-test, immediate post-test, and two-week post-test. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 31.0. Descriptive statistics, including frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation, were used to summarize participants’ general characteristics, and normality was verified using the Shapiro–Wilk test. Homogeneity between the experimental and control groups was examined using independent t-tests. For hypothesis testing, two-way repeated measures ANOVA with Holm–Bonferroni post-hoc correction was performed, and sub-hypotheses were analyzed using independent t-tests. The reliability of the measurement tools was assessed by calculating the Kuder–Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20) and Cronbach’s α coefficients. The results showed that the knowledge score demonstrated significant main effects of time (F = 24.54, p < .001) and a significant interaction between group and time (F = 4.13, p =.041). In the experimental group, knowledge scores increased significantly both immediately after (p < .001) and two weeks after (p < .001) the intervention, whereas in the control group, no significant changes were observed immediately after (p = .021) and two weeks after (p = .154) the intervention. Moreover, between-group comparisons revealed that the experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group at the two-week follow-up (p = .017). For the clinical judgment score, there was a significant main effect of time (F = 51.62, p < .001), but the interaction between group and time was not significant (F = 1.70, p = .200). Nevertheless, independent t-tests showed that the experimental group had significantly higher clinical judgment scores than the control group both immediately after (p = .038) and two weeks after (p = .003) the intervention. In conclusion, blended simulation-based education was shown to be an effective strategy for enhancing and sustaining nurses’ knowledge and clinical judgment in sepsis care. Strengthening nurses’ competence in sepsis recognition and intervention through blended simulation may contribute to improving the quality of nursing care and advancing patient safety. Future studies should further validate the effectiveness of blended simulation by linking it to clinical performance indicators, such as the achievement rate of the sepsis one-hour bundle, and by applying diverse scenarios to capture its impact more comprehensively.