Examining the effectiveness of a distant learning education program: Use of patient safety and reporting law and ethics as example

This study was to test a distant learning education program aiming to improve nurses' understanding of law and ethics regarding to patient safety and reporting in Taiwan. With stratified randomized sampling of 3 medical centers, 12 regional and 50 local hospitals, 2,323 questionnaires were distributed to nurses working at the sampled hospitals. Questionnaire return rate was 99.5% with 2,312 valid returned. Based on this survey, the researchers designed a distant learning education course targeting the knowledge deficits. The results indicated that 57.7% of the sampled nurses passed the patient safety and reporting law and ethic test before the education program was instituted by the National Union of Nurses Associations. 38,603 nurses completed the distant learning course and 94.8% passed the test. This study demonstrated that the distant learning education program is effective, and should be considered as a way to improve access to and reduce cost of continuing education.