Privacy Protection and Affordable Education Program for Nursing Students

Abstract

The study aimed to develop a Privacy Protection and Affordable Education Program (PPAEP) and evaluate its effects on increasing knowledge and perception of patients’ privacy protection in nursing students. The participants in this study were 47 nursing college students in Korea (20 experimental group and 27 control group). We developed the PPAEP program for nursing students to increase knowledge and practice skills that are necessary to provide patients’ privacy protect. The program consisted of three sessions. 1st: Lecture about concept of privacy, personal health information protection, laws related privacy protection, case presentation of privacy threats-watching video. 2nd: Practice patients’ privacy protection skills required in obstetrical nursing area using human patient simulator. 3rd: Team discussion. At the beginning and end of the program, students were surveyed about their knowledge and perception of privacy protect. It consists of 10 items in 2-point scale (1 = correct, 0 = not correct) with higher scores indicating knowledge. Perception was measured by perception about protecting patients’ privacy. The perception of privacy protect questionnaire with 39 items was scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much), with higher scores indicating greater perception. Data were analyzed using SPSS statistics software, version 18.0, in Windows. The perception about patients’ privacy protection in the experimental group which participated in the program showed significantly increased compare to the control group which did not participated in the program (t = 2.363, p = .022). However, no statistically significant differences in the knowledge between both groups were observed. The findings indicate that the PPAEP program was effective to improve perception about patients’ privacy protection in nursing students. In addition, this program might be implied to nursing curriculum related to patient safety.