Development and evaluation of a web-based learning course for clinical nurses: Anticancer chemotherapy and nursing

Abstract

Purpose: Since anticancer medication nursing is an evaluation area for accreditation by medical institutions in Korea, all clinical nurses are required to attend an annual classroom lecture. However, it is necessary to reconsider the methods and effects of this requirement. This study was conducted to develop a web-based anticancer chemotherapy nursing course for clinical nurses and to examine its effectiveness in terms of job knowledge, self-efficacy, and nursing performance.

Methods: A randomized controlled design using random selection was utilized. The content was developed into 5 modules featuring basic and advanced learning, and the total learning time was 80 minutes. To test the effect of the multimedia contents, a randomized control group pretest-posttest study design was adopted. Clinical nurses with less than five years of experience were recruited from a university-affiliated hospital and randomly assigned to an experimental (n=28) or control (n=28) group. The experimental group autonomously learned web-based anticancer chemotherapy nursing for two weeks through a website.

Results: There was a statistically significant increase in the job knowledge of the experimental group receiving the classroom lecture (p=.001). However, there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in self-efficacy (p=.055) and nursing performance (p=.359).

Conclusion: This study found that web-based self-learning could be a useful learning strategy for the anticancer chemotherapy and nursing education that clinical nurses must complete annually. However, it is necessary to verify the effect on self-efficacy and nursing performance through repeated studies.