Integrating Design Thinking Into Undergraduate Nursing Education to Nurture Empathy and Enhance Empathetic Communication: a Wait List RCT
试验速览
- 阶段
- 不适用
- 状态
- 尚未招募
- 入组人数
- 80
- 试验地点
- 1
- 主要终点
- Empathy
研究概览
简要总结
The goal of this randomized controlled trial is to test whether an AI-assisted design thinking workshop can improve empathetic communication in undergraduate nursing students at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The main questions it aims to answer are:
Does the workshop improve students' empathy, creativity, collaboration, problem-solving, and patient-centred care attitudes?
How do students experience the design thinking and AI-supported learning activities?
Researchers will compare the intervention group with a wait-list control group to see whether the workshop leads to better outcomes.
Participants will:
complete a baseline questionnaire before the workshop;
be randomly assigned to receive the workshop now or later;
attend two tutorials in the intervention group, including design thinking activities and AI-simulated clinical scenarios;
complete a follow-up questionnaire after the workshop;
and, for some participants, join a short interview about their learning experience.
详细描述
The study uses a mixed-methods, wait-list randomized controlled trial to evaluate an AI-assisted design thinking workshop for undergraduate nursing students. First, an AI chatbot is co-designed in Phase 1 with 8 nursing faculty members and 8-10 students through a 3-hour workshop, followed by 4-6 weeks of chatbot development and validation. The workshop uses design thinking activities including empathy mapping, patient journey mapping, "How Might We" framing, prototyping, and feedback gathering to define learning needs and chatbot functions. The IT team then builds the chatbot using the workshop outputs, including scenario scripts, response frameworks, assessment criteria, and bilingual English/Cantonese requirements. In Phase 2, 80 eligible Year 2 nursing students are randomly assigned to an intervention group or a wait-list control group. All participants complete baseline and post-intervention questionnaires measuring empathy, creativity, collaboration, problem-solving, and patient-centred care attitudes. The intervention group receives two 90-minute tutorials: one on design thinking fundamentals and one on AI-simulated clinical scenarios. During the second tutorial, students rotate through different scenarios while tutors provide small-group guidance. Participants in the intervention group may also take part in semi-structured interviews to describe their experiences. Quantitative data will be summarized descriptively, and qualitative data from interviews, open-ended responses, and workshop observations will be analyzed using content analysis.
研究设计
- 研究类型
- Interventional
- 分配方式
- Randomized
- 干预模型
- Parallel
- 主要目的
- Other
- 盲法
- Single (Outcomes Assessor)
入排标准
- 性别
- All
- 接受健康志愿者
- 是
入选标准
- •Undergraduate nursing students enrolled in the Bachelor of Nursing programme at CUHK Nethersole School of Nursing.
- •Enrolled in the NURS 3127 course during the 2026-27 academic year.
- •Willing and able to provide verbal informed consent and participate voluntarily in the study.
排除标准
- •Students with prior participation in design-thinking workshops.
研究组 & 干预措施
Intervention Group
The intervention arm will receive an AI-assisted design thinking workshop aimed at strengthening empathetic communication in nursing education. The workshop includes two structured tutorials: the first introduces the design thinking process through activities such as empathy mapping, patient journey mapping, "How Might We" framing, and rapid paper prototyping based on real clinical communication challenges. The second tutorial uses a customized conversational AI chatbot to simulate patient scenarios, allowing students to practice responses in a safe learning environment. During the session, tutors will rotate among groups to provide small-group guidance, feedback, and debriefing. The intervention is intended to help students build empathy, creative thinking, collaboration, and patient-centred communication skills.
干预措施: AI-assisted design thinking workshop (Other)
Wait-list control group
The wait-list control group will complete the same baseline and follow-up questionnaires as the intervention group but will not receive the workshop during the main study period. Instead, they will continue with their usual learning activities and will be offered the AI-assisted design thinking workshop after the study data collection is completed.
干预措施: AI-assisted design thinking workshop (Other)
结局指标
主要结局
Empathy
时间窗: The baseline assessment will be completed one week before the workshop. The post-intervention assessment will be completed within one week after the second tutorial at 12 weeks from enrollment.
Empathy will be measured with the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Professions Student Version (JSE-HPS) which yields total scores ranging from 20 to 140; higher scores indicate greater empathy.
次要结局
- Creativity, collaboration, problem-solving(The baseline assessment will be completed one week before the workshop. The post-intervention assessment will be completed within one week after the second tutorial at 12 weeks from enrollment.)
- Patient-centred care attitudes(The baseline assessment will be completed one week before the workshop. The post-intervention assessment will be completed within one week after the second tutorial at 12 weeks from enrollment. .)
- Experiences and views on the workshop(After intervention, at 12 weeks from enrollment.)
研究者
Carmen Chan Yip Wing-han
Professor
Chinese University of Hong Kong