Stepping into the emergency: nursing students’ lived experience in cardiac arrest immersive simulation

Aim: To explore nursing students’ experiences of immersive simulation (IS) in emergency situations, focusing on how these experiences are understood and how they influence personal and professional development. Background: Immersive simulation is a well-established pedagogical strategy in nursing education, offering realistic and emotionally engaging environments to support clinical reasoning, teamwork, and decision-making. Recent advances, including virtual reality (VR), have enhanced the realism of emergency simulations; however, limited evidence exists on how students interpret these experiences and how they contribute to professional identity formation. Design: Hermeneutic phenomenological qualitative study based on Cohen’s approach. Methods: Fifteen undergraduate nursing students participated in VR-enhanced cardiac arrest simulation scenarios. Data were collected through reflective journals and semi-structured focus groups and were analyzed thematically, with triangulation used to enhance rigor. Results: Four themes emerged: immersion in the emergency, learning from error, transitioning from individual to team-based practice, and envisioning oneself as a future nurse. Conclusions: VR-enhanced IS provides emotionally engaging learning experiences that promote reflection, teamwork, and early professional identity development in nursing students