Background: Simulation-based learning (SBL) has become a core strategy in health-professions education for consolidating clinical skills in a safe, deliberate-practice environment. However, the way students across different healthcare disciplines perceive its value for reinforcing skills learned in the classroom remains incompletely characterised, particularly in multi-programme cohorts.

Objective: To evaluate healthcare students’ perceptions of SBL for clinical skill reinforcement and to examine how those perceptions vary with discipline, academic year, and prior simulation exposure.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 380 healthcare students across six disciplines. Perceptions were measured with a 21-item questionnaire scored on a 5-point Likert scale spanning four domains: Skill Reinforcement, Confidence and Self-Efficacy, Satisfaction and Engagement, and Realism/Fidelity. Internal consistency was assessed with Cronbach’s alpha.

Results: All four subscales demonstrated good internal consistency (α = 0.82–0.88; overall scale α = 0.95). Mean perception scores were positive and significantly above the neutral midpoint of 3.0 for every domain (all p < 0.001), highest for Satisfaction and Engagement (3.74 ± 0.73) and lowest for Confidence and Self-Efficacy (3.22 ± 0.78); the overall mean was 3.44 ± 0.67, with 73.9% of students scoring above neutral. Students with prior simulation experience reported significantly higher perceptions across all domains (overall 3.55 vs 3.30; p < 0.001). Perceptions differed by discipline (overall ANOVA F = 3.42, p = 0.005) and rose steadily across academic years (F = 4.95, p = 0.002; linear trend p < 0.001). Subscales were strongly inter-correlated (r = 0.69–0.73, all p < 0.001).

Conclusion: Healthcare students perceived SBL favourably as a means of reinforcing clinical skills, with the strongest endorsement for engagement and satisfaction and comparatively more reserved views on independent competence. Prior exposure and later training stage were associated with more positive perceptions, supporting early, repeated, and curriculum-integrated simulation across disciplines.