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AI Simulation to Reduce Stigma and Enhance Psychiatric Readiness in Nursing Students
Sponsor: Alexandria University
Summary
Mental illness stigma among nursing students can undermine the quality of care that people with psychiatric conditions receive, and many students feel unprepared for psychiatric practice. This randomized controlled trial will examine whether an AI-based psychiatric simulation programme can reduce stigma and improve readiness for psychiatric nursing practice among fourth-year nursing students at the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University, Egypt. It will also test whether these effects are explained by students' sense of psychological safety during simulation-based learning. Two hundred students will be randomly allocated 1:1 to either the intervention or the control arm. Both arms will receive the standard psychiatric-mental health nursing curriculum. The intervention arm will additionally complete five individual AI-simulation cases (one per week over five weeks, about 15-20 minutes each), covering depression with suicide risk, mania, schizophrenia, substance use disorder, and borderline personality disorder with self-harm. Each case includes a structured interview with a simulated patient, a standardized stigma-trigger statement, automated feedback, and an opportunity to retry. Mental illness stigma, readiness for psychiatric practice, and psychological safety will be measured online at two time points: baseline and immediately after the fifth case. Intervention-arm students will also answer two open-ended questions, analyzed thematically to help explain the quantitative findings.
Official title: Reducing Mental Health Stigma and Enhancing Readiness for Psychiatric Practice Via AI Simulation Among Nursing Students: The Mediating Role of Psychological Safety. A Randomized Controlled Trial
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
18 Years - Any
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
200
Start Date
2026-10-20
Completion Date
2026-12-30
Last Updated
2026-10-27
Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Conditions
Interventions
AI-Simulation Programme
Five individual AI-simulation cases on a dedicated psychiatric simulation platform, one case per week over five consecutive weeks, each lasting about 15-20 minutes and delivered as a low-stakes, ungraded learning activity after a brief orientation. Cases are delivered in a fixed order from least to most emotionally demanding: major depression with suicide risk, mania/bipolar disorder, schizophrenia with hallucinations, substance use disorder with withdrawal, and borderline personality disorder with self-harm. Each case includes a timed structured interview with a simulated patient in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, a Mental State Examination checklist, a standardized (fixed) stigma-trigger statement, a first-attempt response, automated AI feedback, a retry opportunity, and a performance summary. The platform retains no conversational content.
Standard Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing Curriculum
The Faculty's usual psychiatric-mental health nursing course for fourth-year students, comprising theoretical instruction, a supervised clinical rotation, and the usual role-play, video-based, and case-study simulation activities, preceded by the Faculty's standard pre-clinical orientation package (a "Myth-or-Fact" stigma-awareness activity and a self-awareness journaling exercise). Delivered to both study arms without modification.
Locations (1)
Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University
Alexandria, Alexandria Governorate, Egypt