Effect of a Simulation-Based Handover Education Program for Nursing Students: A Quasi-Experimental Design

Nursing handover facilitates the continuity of nursing and ensures patient safety and quality of care. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a handover education program by assessing handover knowledge, self-efficacy, and handover performance competency. A group pretest–post-test quasi-experimental design was used. Thirty 4th-year Korean nursing students participated in a handover education program comprising a lecture and simulation training using a high-fidelity simulator. The average level of handover knowledge was 4.63 ± 1.61 before the program and 5.83 ± 0.95 after (t = −3.71, p = 0.001). Meanwhile, the average self-efficacy score was 3.35 ± 0.57 before the program and 3.90 ± 0.60 after (t = −5.65, p < 0.001). Further, the average handover performance competency was 1.75 ± 0.25 before the program and 2.37 ± 0.21 after (t = −12.08, p < 0.001). The simulation-based handover education intervention was effective in improving knowledge, self-efficacy, and performance competency of nursing students. This intervention can provide an effective method of improving nursing students’ handover skills prior to entering clinical practice.

A Novel Anchor Selection Scheme for Distributed Mobility Management

The number of subscribers in mobile networks is growing rapidly, which challenges the network management and data delivery. The efficient management and routing are key solutions. An important one of the solutions is the Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) that to handles the mobility of subscribers at the edge of mobile networks and load balancing. Otherwise, mobility anchors are distributed across the network, which can manage the handover procedures. In this paper, we propose a novel mobility anchor selection scheme based on the results of a cost function with three factors, to select a suitable cell and anchor for moving subscribers and improve the handover performances of the network. Our results illustrate that the proposed scheme provides significantly enhanced handover performance.