Physiological Differences During Decision Making Between Experienced Nurses and Nursing Students: A Pilot Study

The purpose of this quasi-experimental pilot study was to explore the difference in sympathetic activity between groups of experienced nurses and nursing students during a clinical scenario. Eleven female, senior-level nursing students and 10 female nurses with more than 5 years of nursing experience participated in a computer-generated scenario, while simultaneously having their skin conductance recorded. Experienced nurses generated significantly more skin conductance responses than did the nursing students, and they had a higher score on the clinical scenario. The presence of a bodily signal was found to occur statistically more often in experienced nurses than in nursing students during clinical decision making, which has theoretical and practical implications for nurse educators who seek to aid students in developing sound decision making.