Effects of the M-Learning Materials for Facilitating Nursing Students’ Basic Nursing Skills Competence and Self-Confidence

Patient safety has become an essential practice guideline in the healthcare settings. Nursing students should have accurate and mastered nursing skills in order to provide safe and quality care for patients. In addition, one attribute of a good nurse recognized by patients is to possess professional knowledge and skills to care for them. Therefore, it is necessary to train nursing students with correct and fluent skills at school before they commence their practicum or nursing careers. Except for learning skills and knowledge from lecture and skills laboratory, students should repeatedly review and practice after the class. Evidence also showed that nursing students who have better nursing skills have higher confidence level during their clinical practice. Therefore, how to enhance students’ nursing skills competence is one of main responsibilities of the nursing faculties. New technologies are changing rapidly and have the potential to play an important role in education, such as from e-learning to m-learning and from classroom teaching to anywhere learning. With the development and innovation of the mobile devices, the learning and teaching become more available and accessible. Mobile phone is one of the mobile devices and its penetration rate has exceeded 100% in Taiwan. Smartphones and tablet PCs have also become popular recently. For enhancing nursing students’ nursing skills competence and self-confidence, using new technology, such as smartphones, to deliver basic nursing skills learning materials in the forms of podcasts and multi-touch textbooks is an innovative teaching and learning strategy. Therefore, this three-year project is going (1) to develop the appropriate supplement learning materials of basic nursing skills in the forms of podcasts and multi-touch textbooks, and (2) to examine the effects of these types of learning materials for facilitating nursing students’ basic nursing skills competence and increasing their self-confidence level. The methods are listed as followings: Year One The nursing skills demonstrated in many published DVDs in the current market appear inconsistent with the skills practiced in the hospitals, so the evidence-based standards of nursing skills and procedures should be developed. The skills learning materials for injections and catheterization have been developed so far. Five experts will be invited to review the contents of learning materials. Then, the professional video-making company will be hired to make and edit the videos. The video will be converted to podcasting format files and upload to the Taipei Medical University Website. Concurrently, the questionnaires include catheterization skills and knowledge quiz, skills performance checklists, and satisfaction questionnaire will be developed and five experts will be invited to establish content validity. Then, a pilot study will be conducted with 20 nursing students. The findings of the pilot study can examine the possibilities and effects of learning via smartphone and check the reliability of the questionnaires. Year Two An experimental design will be employed. A convenience sample at one university in northern Taiwan will be recruited. The inclusion criteria are the students who major in nursing, enroll Basic Nursing course, and have their own personal smartphone. The participants will be randomly assigned into intervention and comparison groups after signing the informed consent. The students in the intervention group (n = 30) will be assigned the user ID and passwords to log in the Website in order to download the m-learning materials in form of podcasts. The comparison group (n = 30) will give the paper-based learning materials and, later, will also be assigned the user ID and passwords to download the same m-learning materials after the completion of collecting last posttest data in order to meet ethical requirements. Data will be collected at baseline and after intervention, using the questionnaires including demographic questionnaire, catheterization skills and knowledge quiz, skills performance checklists, self-confidence scale, and satisfaction questionnaire. Data analysis will be conducted by performing percentage, mean, t-test, Chi-square, one-way ANOVA, Pearson r, and repeated measures ANOVA through SPSS 18.0 software. Concurrently, the m-learning materials in form of multi-touch textbooks will be developed by the researchers and reviewed by five experts. Ten nursing students will be invited to examine the readability, fluency, and clarity of the contents. Year Three An experimental design will be employed. A convenience sample at one university in northern Taiwan will be recruited. The inclusion criteria are the students who major in nursing, enroll Basic Nursing course, and have their own personal smartphone. The participants will be randomly assigned into intervention and comparison groups after signing the informed consent. The students in the intervention group (n = 30) will be assigned the user ID and passwords to log in the Website in order to download the m-learning materials in form of multi-touch textbooks. The comparison group (n = 30) will give the paper-based learning materials and, later, will also be assigned the user ID and passwords to download the same m-learning materials after the completion of collecting last posttest data in order to meet ethical requirements. Data will be collected at baseline and after intervention, using the questionnaires including demographic questionnaire, catheterization skills and knowledge quiz, skills performance checklists, self-confidence scale, and satisfaction questionnaire. Data analysis will be conducted by performing percentage, mean, t-test, Chi-square, one-way ANOVA, Pearson r, and repeated measures ANOVA through SPSS 18.0 software. The findings of this study will provide nursing students more convenient, flexible, and accessible method to review nursing skills taught in the skills laboratory at any time and any place. It also provides nursing faculties another thought about teaching strategy and method. It is expected that the students can have sufficient knowledge and skills, and self-confidence to deliver safe care for the patients in the future practice. In addition, the results of this project can also be promoted to other nursing schools and hospitals. Reviewing nursing skills learning materials via smartphones may be another learning channel for nursing students and nurses to use for now and the future. It is hoped that the m-learning materials can be shared by schools and clinical settings and reduce the inconsistence in the skills performance between schools and hospitals.