Pediatric Nursing Education Integrating AI-Based Communication Simulation and Human Library Narratives: Evaluating Effects on Students' Communication, Empathy, and Emotion Regulation

Background and Purpose: Although clinical communication skills are taught in the classroom, students generally report that "what they learn in class is difficult to apply to clinical situations," indicating a significant gap between learning and application. This phenomenon aligns with recent research indicating that traditional lectures and simple role-playing are insufficient to cultivate communication skills transferable to real clinical settings. When faced with crying patients, anxious family members asking questions, or unexpected clinical situations, students often fail to effectively apply what they have learned due to nervousness, highlighting the need for a more realistic and repetitive teaching model. Currently, nursing students are mostly from Generation Z, whose learning characteristics include high digital sensitivity, a preference for interactive and visual learning materials, and relatively limited attention span for one-way lectures. Therefore, how to enhance learning engagement through innovative and immersive teaching strategies has become an important issue in nursing education.

The proposed study has five specific aims:

1. To develop and implement a pediatric nursing teaching model that integrates AI communication simulation and human library narratives.
2. To evaluate the effectiveness of this teaching model in promoting nursing students' clinical communication skills.
3. To examine the effectiveness of this teaching intervention in enhancing nursing students' empathy.
4. To explore the impact of this teaching intervention on nursing students' emotion regulation abilities.
5. To understand students' learning experiences, feelings, emotion regulation changes, and improvement suggestions regarding this integrated teaching intervention.

Methods: A randomized controlled design was used: the control group received traditional pediatric nursing education; the experimental group received an innovative teaching model integrating "AI communication simulation combined with human library narratives," although the experimental group received different models due to course schedule and teaching environment arrangements. A mixed-methods approach was used for data collection, combining quantitative and qualitative data to comprehensively understand students' ability changes and learning processes. Quantitative data were collected using structured questionnaires, including: a basic information questionnaire, a communication skills scale, the Jefferson Empathy Scale, AI dialogue record analysis data, and an emotion regulation questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected through 5R structured reflections and focus group interviews to comprehensively present the effectiveness of the integrated teaching intervention on nursing students' clinical communication, empathy, and emotion regulation abilities.