Background: Disaster nursing deploys professional nursing knowledge and skills systematically to reduce disaster-related risks to life and health. Disaster nursing education requires providing simulations using standardized patients.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop, based on the International Council of Nurses' Framework of Disaster Nursing Competencies, a simulation-based disaster nursing education program for nursing students that employed standardized patients.

Methods: A nonequivalent, control group, pretest-and-posttest design was used. Participants were senior nursing students from two universities, with 70 assigned to the experimental group, 35 assigned to the comparison group, and 35 assigned to the control group. Data were collected from January 25 to April 3, 2019. The simulation-based disaster nursing education program consisted of a 60-minute theoretical lecture on disaster management and two scenarios. The effectiveness of the simulation-based disaster nursing education program was measured using levels of disaster nursing competencies, disaster triage competency, disaster preparedness, critical thinking disposition, and confidence in disaster nursing.

Results: Significant differences were found between the experimental and comparison/control groups in terms of disaster nursing competencies (F = 20.06, p < .001), nursing triage (F = 17.35, p < .001), disaster preparedness (F=60.37, p < .001), critical thinking disposition (F = 19.63, p < .001), and confidence in disaster nursing (F = 20.24, p < .001).

Conclusions: Simulation-based disaster nursing education programs using standardized patients can be useful in disaster nursing education. They can contribute to future changes in nursing education and practice by improving the disaster nursing capabilities and preparedness of students.