Teaching nursing diagnoses to school nurses: a standardized measure of the cognitive effect.

Abstract

ABSTRACT A continuing education program on nursing diagnosis was conducted for school health nurses. A formal evaluation procedure was performed to measure the programs effectiveness in cognitive and behavioral terms. This article describes the process to measure the cognitive impact. Twenty-one school nurses volunteered to participate and were randomly assigned to the experimental group (N = 10) or the control group (N = 11). Five school health or nursing diagnosis experts created and reviewed two case studies in a two-round review for consensus and to validate a rating standard. Nurses in the experimental group read and assigned nursing diagnoses to a case study, before and after participating in the five-week program. Accurate nursing diagnoses reported for the case study increased with statistical significance from pre to post test. While behavior, or use of nursing diagnoses in clinical practice, was the ultimate goal, assurance of the ability to accurately assign nursing diagnoses was an essential intermediate step. The simulated case study, with an expert panel to formulate an objective rating standard, provided a feasible and effective method to measure accurate identification of nursing diagnoses, the cognitive domain.