The most successful method teaching nursing students infection control

Project summary

SUMMARY Approximately 33% of all health care-associated infections are preventable. It is therefore important to train nursing students in this topic. In collaboration with the hospital and an internet company, the Department of nursing tried out an e-learning program in infection control. The students received learning goals for the course, one group had the e-learning program, and the other group had a three hour lecture. After the course they took a multiple-choice test. In addition, three focus groups were established. The students were satisfied with both teaching approaches. The lecture gave a good introduction to the prescribed readings. The e-learning was evaluated as good on design, academic content, and the integrated tests were experienced as motivating for their learning. Specific learning goals were evaluated as useful. Dependent on method used, gender and age were important for the test results. E-learning has to be seen as a resource like a lecture. It is important that the students are competent in ICT, because they will meet this tool in their clinical practice. At the same time a Degree level course has to have many different teaching methods to achieve goals related to in-depth and surface learning. Nurses must consider how they can address infection prevention, control and management within health care settings. An outbreak of any infectious disease can occasionally occur, even when protocols have been followed. A well-coordinated, multidisciplinary response will minimize the impact of the outbreak by controlling and managing the impact and ongoing risks. In this study nursing students where challenged to manage infection control based on two hypothetical cases, MRSA and Norovirus. The purpose of the study was to determine which teaching methods were the most efficient to teach students infection control and to determine the teachers? role by comparing three different teaching methods; study groups with and without teacher and simulation training. A class of 141 2nd year nursing students participated as a part of their learning program in infection control. Three focus groups were used to evaluate the program. Overall, the findings indicated that simulation training made the students more aware of how complex each scenario was. Events they had not thought about happened, and this led to a better recollection of details. The teachers? role was crucial in both teaching methods by asking of appropriate questions, giving feedback and hypothetical examples.