The purpose of this research was to examine the use of a training program, designed for this study, to educate nursing students in addressing challenging behaviors in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in health care settings. The training program designed for this study included lecture, role-play, and debriefing components. Two main components were evaluated in this research study: the nursing students’ knowledge and understanding of ASD, and the students’ self-perceived competency in addressing challenging behaviors of children with ASD in a health care setting. The researcher used a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures, through pre-training and post-training assessments, to evaluate the effectiveness of this training program. The results of this study show that the training program used was effective for both improving the nursing students’ understanding and knowledge of Autism Spectrum Disorder as well as improving their self-perceived competency in addressing challenging behaviors in children with ASD in a health care setting. Extending this research to a larger sample size, multiple nursing programs, and related health care fields is needed to further study the effectiveness of this training program
