This study intends to investigate the effects of mobile and interactive software teaching tools on technology acceptance model, satisfaction, and critical care knowledge learning of clinical nurses. Moreover, nursing lecturers are encouraged to use critical care professional knowledge to accurately and effectively implement critical care techniques and care measures to improve critical care quality and medical safety of critically ill patients.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study used convenience sampling to enroll nurses working at 6 units, such as ICU centers of Department of Internal Medicine and Department of Surgery in a certain medical center in the northern Taiwan as the subjects. The subjects were ICU nurses. The inclusion criteria included: nurses over the age of 20 working at ICU. The exclusion criteria included: nurses who were not working at ICUs during the study period and clinical nursing lecturers of ICUs. This study enrolled a total of 202 subjects. Besides, the subjects were divided into different groups according to their ICU seniority. One group received basic courses (seniority: 0-6 months), one group received advanced courses (seniority: > 6 months and ≦ 24 months), and the other group received premium courses (seniority: > 2 years). This study compared the effects of introduction of mobile learning on learning perception of critical care nurses at different levels.
The course contents designed by the mobile learning program developed in this study were mainly composed of the teaching films jointly made by various ICU experts and sub-investigators. The 5 basic courses included disease severity scoring, physical examination and evaluation of critically ill patients, care bundles for infection, fundamental ECG, and emergency medication function and configuration. There 8 advanced courses included pain and sedation treatment and evaluation of critically ill patients, heatstroke, interpretation of arterial blood gas analysis values and abnormal test values, chest X-ray interpretation, treatment and care for drug resistant patients, palliative care for critically ill patients, sepsis, and abnormal ECG interpretation. The 5 premium courses included treatment process and organ donation patients, brain death judgment, introduction to critical illness quality indices, and introduction to trauma care for critical illness and empirical medicine (including empirical nursing). Each course was designed as a 30-minute educational course that mainly gives instructions on critical illness specialty nursing knowledge. Traditional classroom teaching adopted general face-to-face teaching, while mobile learning requested nurses to preview online learning and assessment and arrange learning activities anytime anyplace according to their learning speed to enable all the nurses at ICU centers to receive standardized knowledge learning. Moreover, as mobile learning deepened clinical care, nurses were able to use the mobile APP to inquire or ask clinical lecturers to closely combine online learning with clinical care.
Results:
This study enrolled a total of 212 nurses. Their mean age was 29.76 years old. The educational background of most of them was “university” (180 subjects; 84.9%). The ICU seniority of most of them was “2-5 years” (76 subjects; 35.8%), followed by “more than 5 years” (65 subjects; 30.7%), “1~2 years” (41 subjects; 19.3%), “6~12 months” (28 subjects; 13.2%), and “3~6 months” (2 subjects; 1.0%).
In terms of technology acceptance: (1) the analysis on the technology usefulness showed that the score of “In this learning activity, the use of such a learning method (or system) is more effective than general traditional support learning” (M = 4.97, SD = 0.63) was the highest. The mean of “overall usefulness” was 4.91, and Standard deviation was 0.59. The analysis showed that there was no significant difference in the score of ease of use of nurses of different basic attributes (p >.05). (2) The analysis on technology ease of use showed that the score of “I understand the operating method of this learning system rapidly” (M = 4.94, SD = 0.62) was the highest, followed by “I find that the interface of such a learning method (system) is very easy to use” (M = 4.94, SD = 0.67). The mean of “overall ease of use” was 4.91, and Standard deviation was 0.61. (3) For satisfaction, the score of “Using this learning method enables me to obtain some new findings or new knowledge” (M = 4.84, SD = 0.66) was the highest. The mean of “overall satisfaction” was 4.81, and Standard deviation was 0.58. In addition, the difference in satisfaction of nurses of different ability levels also reached significance (F = 2.46, p <.05). The LSD post hoc comparison showed that the satisfaction of N3 nurses was higher than that of N1 and N2 nurses.
Effects on critical care learning perception: The t-test showed that the difference in both the pre-test and post-test scores of nurses receiving basic, advanced, and premium courses reached statistical significance (p<.05), suggesting that there were significant differences in pre-test and post-test scores of the subjects. It could be concluded that the introduction of mobile learning had an effect on critical care nurses’ critical care abilities to a certain extent.
Conclusion:
With the advancement of information technology and popularity of computer network, engaging in “teaching” and “learning” online has been regarded as the learning pattern of e-generation, as well as a trend around the world (Collet & Pietquin, 2015). The increasing popularity of smart phones has made the trend of smart and mobile life unstoppable and significantly changed people’s behavioral models for communication and interaction. E-learning enables learners to choose the suitable time and place to engage in learning, and then engage in synchronized or non-synchronized interactive learning model with instructors. Therefore, learners are not confined by time and space (Yen and Chen, 2006; Tsai, 2003). Hopefully, the development of mobile APP that systemically offers critical care educational training courses may help cultivate critical care nurses’ critical illness core nursing competencies and instruct critical illness and critical care professional knowledge in a planned manner to train nurses to use critical care professional knowledge to accurately and effectively implement critical care techniques and care measures, improve clinical critical care nurses’ care abilities, and further improve patients’ care quality.