Designing, Implementation, and Evaluation of Game-based Education in Pediatric Nursing Care Course

Introduction: Game-based education is a new method of teaching and learning in nursing education that can effectively enable teacher and learner to achieve educational goals. Methods: This study was conducted in three phases: needs assessment, development of a game package, and implementation and evaluation of the game-based education among 5th-semester nursing students in the pediatric nursing care course at Shahid Beheshti College of Nursing and Midwifery in 2024. First, a survey was used to assess nursing students' satisfaction with existing teaching methods and their willingness to adopt game-based learning. Second, based on the course content, three games, namely pantomime, sentence construction, and child-home-family were designed and implemented in different sessions based on lesson plan. a survey was conducted to measure the satisfaction of the nursing students about game based education. Results: After the implementation of game-based teaching, the pantomime game (50.5%) was the most interesting game among nursing students. Overall, 90% of students reported high satisfaction with game-based teaching. The main benefits cited were improved learning (90.9%), increased motivation to attend class (95.5%), increased enjoyment (86.1%) and fun (90.9%), increased class participation (80.9%), and improved communication between teachers and students (86.3%). Conclusion: Nursing students have positive feedback towards game –based education in pediatric nursing care course, therefore it is suggested to use these three games alongside lecture teaching method in nursing teaching classess.