Excerpt: The recently published article entitled “Academic Safety During Nursing Simulation: Perceptions of Nursing Students and Faculty” by Barbara J. Ganley and Luanne Linnard-Palmer (2010; Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 6(5), e1-e9; doi: 10.1016/j.ecns.2010.06.004) draws conclusions that are not supported by the data and findings presented in the article. After comparing the level of agreement between students and faculty on how much anxiety is produced in different simulation performance testing situations, instead of concluding that faculty and students have a moderate degree of agreement about which testing situations provoke the most anxiety, the authors jump to a list of recommendations (in Table 5) that have no basis in the findings. The recommendations were never actually implemented or tested but were implied to be conclusions and recommendations based on the data. To illustrate this point, Table 3 only lists six findings, in contrast to the dozens of recommendations in Table 5. This disparity confirms that at least the bulk of the many recommendations are not supported by any evidence, or at minimum, no evidence that the authors presented or cited. The conclusions and recommendations should have been limited to the degree to which different situations provoke different intensities of anxiety.

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