Improving scrub and circulating skills in operating room students: A quasi-experimental study on the influence of reflective education

Background Objective: Reflective learning is one of the most important learning models because it is based on the student’s own experiences and is based on self-directed learning. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of reflective learning on scrub and circular skills in operating room students at the Iran University of Medical Sciences. Material Methods: The current research is a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design. The research population consisted of 60 students in the 3rd and 5th semesters of their bachelor’s degree in the operating room who were randomly assigned to two training groups: one that used the reflective learning approach and the other that used the conventional university method. The skills of the correct principles of scrub and circular were measured in both groups before and one week after the intervention using an objective structured clinical test (three stations). The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire that was valid and reliable. The data were analyzed by SPSS version 22. Results: The two intervention and control groups were homogeneous and similar in terms of demographic characteristics (p 0.05). The intervention group (reflective learning) demonstrated a significantly higher mean score in scrub and circular skills compared to the control group (traditional learning) (p 0.05). Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that the reflective learning teaching method has been able to significantly improve post-test scores. So that, with a structured and coherent guide for reflection, students can move beyond the description process to deeper levels of reflection and, thus, learning.