Observational analysis reveals differences in visual cue processing between expert and student nurses, indicating potential implications for training.
This study investigates how clinical experience shapes nurses’ visual cue-gathering during acute patient deterioration. Using wearable eye-trackers, expert and student nurses’ visual behaviors were analyzed across pre- and post-deterioration phases in a simulated patient care scenario. Expert nurses fixated more on clinically relevant areas and exhibited more focused, sequential gaze patterns. In contrast, student nurses displayed greater fixation variability and higher gaze transition entropy, indicating less efficient scanning and increased cognitive load. These findings offer an objective, sensor-based understanding of how experience influences clinical decision-making and highlight eye-tracking’s potential for nursing education.
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Chen et al. (2025) studied this question.
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