From Textbook to Bedside: How a Mobile App Transformed Nursing Students’ Clinical Communication

Background: Effective communication is essential for safe and high-quality nursing care, yet many nursing students in non-English speaking contexts struggle with oral communication and clinical terminology. Mobile-assisted learning may provide scalable support for developing these skills within professional curricula.
Purpose: This study evaluated the impact of a mobile learning application, DocsDocs, on nursing students’ clinical communication skills in English, focusing on oral proficiency and medical terminology use.
Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 100 nursing students enrolled in a required practicum course at a college in southern Taiwan. Participants were assigned to either an intervention group that used DocsDocs or a control group that received standard course activities. Pre- and post-intervention assessments included structured oral presentations and terminology tests administered in both contextualized and isolated formats. Students’ reflections on learning strategies and engagement were also analyzed.
Results: Compared with the control group, students in the intervention group showed significantly greater improvements in oral fluency, accuracy, and use of contextualized medical terminology (all p < .01). Gains in fluency and terminology-in-context were particularly pronounced. Qualitative feedback indicated that students valued repeated exposure to authentic clinical language and appreciated opportunities for self-directed practice and active learning.
Conclusions: Integrating mobile learning into nursing curricula can strengthen students’ readiness for clinical communication by enhancing fluency and contextual vocabulary acquisition. DocsDocs demonstrates promise as a practical and scalable teaching innovation for health professions education, particularly in multilingual or English-as-a-foreign-language contexts.