Effectiveness of Educational Hypermedia for Teaching Obstetric Risk Classification

The lack of clinical skills in reception and obstetric risk classification among nursing students has prompted the use of innovative educational technologies. In this scenario, educational hypermedia has emerged as a promising strategy for enhancing interactive learning and developing clinical reasoning. This study evaluated the effectiveness of an educational hypermedia in teaching obstetric risk reception and classification among third-year undergraduate nursing students at a private university in northeastern Brazil. This was a cluster-randomized clinical trial with 2 parallel groups (intervention and control), each with 30 participants. The intervention group used educational hypermedia after theoretical and practical classes, whereas the control group followed only traditional strategies. The primary outcome was knowledge gain, measured by pre-intervention and post-intervention tests. Both groups showed an improvement in performance, but the intervention group obtained a significantly higher average in the post-test (P=.001), with a high effect size (Cohen d=1.131), in contrast to a small effect in the control group. In addition, the students' evaluation using the LORI scale showed high satisfaction with the quality of the hypermedia (mean=4.77). The results indicate that hypermedia is an effective and complementary tool to traditional teaching, promoting greater knowledge retention and stimulating clinical reasoning in the context of obstetrics.