After the COVID-19 epidemic, the state has paid more attention to the clinical teaching function of affiliated hospitals of colleges and universities. Strengthening the integration of medicine and education and improving the quality and effect of clinical practice teaching are critical challenges facing medical education. The difficulty of orthopedic teaching lies in the characteristics of a wide variety of diseases, strong professionalism, and relatively abstract characteristics, which affect the initiative, enthusiasm, and learning effect of nursing students. In this study, a flipped classroom teaching plan based on the CDIO (conceive-design-implement-operate) concept was constructed and practiced in the orthopedic nursing student training course to improve the effect of practical teaching, and it is convenient for teachers to implement more effective and targeted teaching in the flipped classroom of nursing education and even medical education in the future.
Fifty undergraduate nursing students who practiced in the Orthopedics Department of a tertiary hospital in June 2017 were enrolled in the control group, while 50 undergraduate nursing students who practiced in the same department in June 2018 were enrolled in the intervention group. The intervention group adopted the flipped classroom teaching mode of the CDIO concept, whereas the control group adopted the traditional teaching mode. After finishing the department practice task, the students in the two groups completed the evaluation of theory, operation skills, independent learning ability, and critical thinking ability. They completed the evaluation of clinical practice ability in eight dimensions, including four processes of nursing procedures, humanistic care ability, and evaluation of clinical teaching quality for two groups of teachers.
After teaching, the clinical practice ability, critical thinking ability, autonomous learning ability, theoretical and operational performance, and evaluation of clinical teaching quality in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group (all p < 0.05).
The CDIO-based teaching mode can stimulate the independent learning ability and critical thinking ability of nursing interns, promote the organic combination of theory and practice, improve their ability to comprehensively use theoretical knowledge to analyze and solve practical problems, and improve teaching effectiveness.

© 2023. The Author(s).