Development of Teaching Strategies to Prepare Future Nurses' Ability in Evidence-Based Practice

Tuesday, 23 July 2013: 1:50 PM

Shwu-Ru Liou, PhD, RN
Department of Nursing, Chang Gung University of Science and Technology, Chiayi, Taiwan
Ching-Yu Cheng, PhD, RN
School of Nursing, Chang Gung University of Science and Technology, Chiayi, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to design new teaching strategies for nursing research course.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to understand ways of teaching nursing research.

Purpose: Evidence-based practice has become imperative in clinical practice since it bridges up the gap between conducted research and clinical practice. Promote students’ interests and enthusiasm for research is therefore crucial when teaching nursing research. The purpose of the study was to develop innovative teaching strategies for undergraduate nursing research to increase students’ interests and engagement in research. 

Methods: This study was descriptive, pretest and posttest quasi experimental design. One-hundred-three students enrolling in nursing research course in two classes were in the experimental group and 106 students in the other two classes were in the comparison group. The majority of students never took nursing research course or participated in any research before the class. The teaching strategy includes literature search and evaluation, in-class activities of research procedure, and final project using integrated research review method. The Attitudes toward Research, Classroom Engagement Scale, Self-Directed Learning Instrument, Nursing Eight Core Competences Scale, and Value of Teams were applied to evaluate the outcomes of the innovative teaching strategies. Descriptive statistics and repeated ANCOVA were used to analyze the data. 

Results: Participants in the experimental group exhibited higher score on attitudes toward research, nursing core competence, value of teams, class engagement, and self-directed learning than participants in the comparison group at the end of the course. The research knowledge test score was significantly higher in the experimental group than it in the comparison group. Student in the experimental group perceived lower pressure but higher degree of interest, and enjoyment and acceptance of the research course than students in the comparison group. 

Conclusion: This study provides important information for nurse educators that using innovative teaching strategies in nursing research course is necessary and useful to enhance students’ interest, enthusiasm, and research knowledge about evidence-based practice.