A STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF A PATIENT TEACHING AND COUNSELING CONTINUING EDUCATION WORKSHOP ON NURSING PRACTICE.

Abstract

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179 p.

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a one day continuing education program on the subsequent practice of the nurse participants. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used. Attendance at a seven hour patient teaching and counseling workshop served as the independent variable. The dependent variable was nursing practice as measured by retrospective audit of clinical records for whom the RN subjects cared.Two null hypotheses were tested in this study: (1) There is no significant difference in the audit rating scores between RN's attending the continuing education program (experimental subjects) and RN's not attending the program (control subjects). (2) There is no significant difference between audit rating scores on control and experimental group subjects when analyzed by the demographic variables of age, sex, type of basic nursing education, extent of education (formal and continuing) and type and length of professional experience.Data for the first hypothesis were analyzed by t-test. The second hypothesis was tested by factorial analysis of variance. Significance was reported at the .05 level of confidence. Results of this study included the following findings and conclusions: (1) The experimental group had significantly higher posttest audit scores than the control group. Course attendance did make a difference in the patient teaching audit scores of the nurse participant. (2) Experimental subjects had significantly higher posttest audit scores than control subjects regardless of age, type of basic educational preparation, and length of community health experience. (3) There was no significant difference between part I audit scores of experimental and control subjects who had attended less than six continuing education courses over a two year period and those who were employed 1-5 years in present position. Course attendance did not make a difference in the part I audit scores of participants who were infrequent continuing education participants and those who were newer employees. (4) There was no significant difference between part II audit scores of experimental and control subjects who had 16-32 years of professional experience. Course attendance did not make a difference in the part II audit scores of participants with lengthy professional experience.