Knowledge retention of the traumatic brain injury guidelines at a Level 1 trauma center

Abstract

Trauma is the leading cause of death in those age 1–45 and the 3rd leading cause of death overall in all groups in the United States and is associated with an annual cost of 671 billion dollars. Education remains one of our most valuable tools in combatting this public health epidemic called “Trauma” and must, therefore, be provided in an efficient manner not only for nursing personnel but for all healthcare providers involved in the care of trauma patients. An on-line educational platform was utilized to introduce updates and revisions to our institutional traumatic brain injury (TBI) guidelines and protocols to a multidisciplinary group of nurses and surgical residents. In addition, a hands-on module was also utilized to ensure accuracy and consistency across all disciplines. Utilizing the NetLearning® educational process, an active learning platform, resulted in an improvement in test scores which was sustained at the 6-month point for both nurses and resident physicians. There was a statistically significant improvement in the nurse and resident physician combined scores between the pre-test and immediate post-test mean scores (74%±9.35% pre vs. 88%±6.23% post, P<0.0005), and no meaningful change between the immediate post-test and 6-month post-test scores, indicating sustained improvement. Multidisciplinary health care education via and on-line educational platform utilizing pre and posttest was found to be an effective teaching as well a process improvement methodology with sustained knowledge out to 6 months at a community based academic Level 1 trauma center.