Paper
Friday, July 23, 2004
The Efficacy of Primary Care Nurses' Patient Education About Fecal Occult Blood Testing
Charlene Stokamer, MPH, MSN, Patient Health Education, Patient Health Education, VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, New York, NY, USA
| Learning Objective #1: List two successful methods to involve nurses in a nursing research study that can improve their sense of community |
| Learning Objective #2: Describe a simple randomization technque used to compare two teaching methods in a primary care clinic |
Objective: The objective of this study was to establish whether intensive teaching about fecal occult blood tests (FOBT) resulted in more FOBT card returns than standard teaching methods. Design: Randomized study Population: A racially diverse group of US Veterans attending primary care clinic in New York City. Variables: Two different teaching methods and their effect on FOBT card returns Method: Two teaching methods, random concealed allocation, were distributed to primary care nurses in batches of 200.The nurses opened the envelopes in numerical order and taught the assigned methotd to 790 consecutive patients referred to them for FOBT teaching. Findings: Patients receiving intensive teaching were significantly more likely to return the FOBT cards than those receiving standard teaching. Conclusion: Intensive, detailed patient education about how to collect stool samples for FOBT is more efficacious than standard teaching methods. Implication: The time nurses spend teaching patients can improve outcomes. However in this study teaching styles were not taken into account and each outcomes related to each nurse's teaching were considered.
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Sigma Theta Tau International
July 22-24, 2004