Nurses are often at high risk of sexual harassment because of closing interaction with people and frequent physical contact with patients, especially for the nursing students who are young and inexperienced. If students encounter sexual harassment during the internship, and did not properly addressed, could affect their self-concept, may also lead to learning difficulties, and even affect their willingness to engage in nursing in the future. Recent studies show that a high percentage of both nurses and nursing students are being sexually harassed, and when sexual harassment occurs, many of them do not know how to deal with it properly, resulting in adverse physical and psychological reactions. Therefore, it is important to educate nursing students to understand sexual harassments that occur in the clinical settings and enable them being competent to deal with situations related to sexual harassment.
Purpose:
The aims of this study were to develop a sexual harassment prevention e-learning training course for nursing students, as well as examine its effectiveness.
Methods:
Based on Keller’s ARCS Motivation Model as the theoretical framework, the authors combines the literatures with the previously collected cases of sexual harassment in internship situations to produce digital teaching materials as well as a clinical-based manner in its developing process. A quasi-experimental research design was applied to examine the effect of the training course. A sample of 109 junior nursing students from two universities in central Taiwan were assigned to two groups: intervention (n=67), and control (n=42). Only the intervention group received sexual harassment prevention e-learning training course before their internship and the e-learning courses are available throughout their practicum. The structured sexual harassment prevention knowledge and behavior questionnaire was administered for measuring the effectiveness of e-learning training course.
Results:
A sexual harassment prevention e-learning training course were developed for nursing students.The contents of the e-learning training course, including the definition of sexual harassment, regulations, tips of prevention and management, clinical cases, etc., the videos, comics and multimedia were used, focused on the clinical situation. The learning objectives of the course covers three aspects, which are knowledge, skills, and attitude. Of the students who completed the study, nursing students who received sexual harassment prevention e-learning training course had significantly higher mean score (58.28 ± 6.37, p<0.05) than those in the control group (55.24 ± 7.57) after they finished the clinical internship.
Conclusion:
This e-learning course is effective, it could improve the awareness of nursing students on the sexual harassment and the ability to deal with related events. This study can be used as a reference to promote the nursing practice of sexual harassment prevention. That is, effective sexual harassment prevention of digital materials not only can reduce the adverse effects of sexual harassment, but also can enhance nursing students’ gender awareness and sensitivity in their clinical practice.
Abstract Summary
An effective e-learning course is developed to enhance nursing students’ gender awareness and sensitivity as well as to promote the prevention of sexual harassment in nursing practice.
Reference:
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