Clinical practice teaching system for MNS cardiac rehabilitation: Delphi consensus
Caiyun Sun, Xingbin Du, Yanyan Fan, Guiyun Wang
Abstract
China faces a growing demand for cardiac rehabilitation professionals that outstrips available medical resources. While nursing master's candidates represent key talent reserves, current higher education lacks standardized training frameworks for cardiac rehabilitation nursing.
Introduction
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) represent the leading cause of global mortality and disease burden, with alarmingly high prevalence and mortality rates [1]. The World Health Organization reports that CVD mortality has been the highest across all income levels, particularly in high-income and middle-income countries [2].
Materials and methods
The Delphi method, an iterative and structured multistage approach, is widely used in health and social sciences to achieve expert consensus, especially when empirical evidence is limited [16]. It involves several rounds of anonymous questionnaires.
Results
The demographic characteristics of the final sample are presented in S2 Table (S3 File). The age of the experts ranged from 32 to 67, with an average age of 44.82 ± 7.974 years. The average working life was 22.68 ± 9.089 years, ranging from 6 to 43 years.
Discussion
This study identified the key educational priorities for the clinical practice teaching of Master of Nursing Specialist (MNS) students in cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Using competency‑based education (CBE) as the theoretical framework, we employed the Delphi method to construct a clinical practice teaching system that includes teaching objectives, content, methods, evaluation, and rotation duration.
Conclusion
Based on an extensive review of literature, the research team utilized the Delphi method to establish a clinical practice teaching system for Nursing Master’s students specializing in cardiac rehabilitation.
Citation: Sun C, Du X, Fan Y, Wang G (2026) Clinical practice teaching system for MNS cardiac rehabilitation: Delphi consensus. PLoS One 21(6): e0351886. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0351886
Editor: Yagnik Dave, Marwadi University, INDIA
Received: July 31, 2025; Accepted: June 2, 2026; Published: June 25, 2026
Copyright: © 2026 Sun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All data files are available from the Figshare database (accession number(s) https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31310665).
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
