Background: In Japan, education of nursing professionals is taken seriously, as nurses are able to manage health and medical issues such as the decreasing birthrate, aging population, and the advancements in medical care (MEXT, 2011; JNS, 2015). Amid this, the training of educational instructors involved in the guidance of novice nurses and nursing students is essential (Doi et al., 2015). Considering this, revealing the relationship between educational instructors’ learning needs in the learning environment design (hereafter referred to as “learning needs”) and learning support for novice nurses and nursing students will provide beneficial information for the educational practice of instructors. In this study, an instructor refers to a nursing professional who provides educational instruction to novice nurses or nursing students primarily in each hospital department.
Methods: The participants comprised 1,153 instructors at 101 hospitals with a capacity of 200 or more general hospital beds in Japan. A questionnaire survey was conducted through mail, which composed of individual attributes, items related to learning needs (learning needs in relation to tool design, learning needs in relation to organizational design, and learning needs in relation to activity design) (Doi et al., 2015), and items related to learning support (practical support, thinking support, mental support). The survey period was November 2017 to March 2018. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to confirm the structure of learning needs. Items related to learning support were set up with responses divided into “experience of instructing novice nurses” and “experience of instructing nursing students.” Each learning needs score was grouped by quartile and a comparison of the low score group and high score group by learning support score was performed with a Mann-Whitney U test. For confirmatory factor analysis, IBM® SPSS® Amos 25 was used. The relationship between learning needs and learning support was determined using IBM® SPSS® Statistics 25. This study was performed with approval from the Ethical Review Board for Nursing Research of Osaka Prefecture University.
Results: The number of valid survey responses was 621 (valid response rate 53.9%). The average age was 40.87 years (SD=7.85) and years of nursing experience was 18.02 (SD=7.76). There were 612 (98.6%) participants with experience of instructing novice nurses for 6.78 years (SD=6.36). There were 550 (88.6%) participants with experience of instructing nursing students for 6.45 years (SD=6.44). Confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a three-factor structure for learning needs: instrument design, organization design, and activity design. Goodness-of-fit was acceptable, with indicators of GFI = 0.845, AGFI = 0.815, CFI = 0.910, and RMSEA = 0.075 examining the relationship with learning support. It was found that in the average rank for practical support (P<0.001), thinking support (P<0.001), and mental support (P<0.001) for instructors having “experience of instructing novice nurses,” the learning needs for the high score group for tool design, organization design, and activity design were significantly higher than the low score group. Further, in the average rank for practical support (P<0.001), thinking support (P<0.001), and mental support (P<0.001) for instructors having “experience instructing nursing students,” the learning needs for the high score group for tool design, organization design, and activity design were significantly higher than the low score group.
Conclusions: As it was revealed that the instructor’s learning needs are related to learning support; it is necessary to fulfill learning needs in order to more efficiently and effectively practice instruction for novice nurses and nursing students. Further, it is thought that other factors may be influencing the learning support for novice nurses and nursing students by instructors, and thus future investigation is necessary.
This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20592505.
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