Effect of an educational intervention on nursing knowledge about enteral nutrition therapy: A quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Background and objective: Permanent education is an important strategy to improve nurses' knowledge and professional practice. This study assessed the improvement on the knowledge of nurses after attending an educational intervention on enteral nutritional therapy using clinical simulation.

Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted with 41 nurses with pre-and post-testing. Two clinical simulation scenarios were applied using the National League for Nursing Jeffries Simulation framework: the first was about the indications for enteral nutritional and insertion of the feeding tube, and the second was about enteral feeding monitoring and control of complications. The intervention was developed according to the guideline for reporting evidence based practice educational interventions and teaching. A validated instrument was used to verify knowledge of enteral nutritional therapy. There was a high level of inter-rater agreement.

Results: The analysis of the clinical simulation showed a statistically significant difference between the pre- and post-training scores in all domains of the instrument (p < .05). The effect size was large (Cohen's d = 0.946). The educational intervention with two clinical simulation scenarios significantly improved nurses' knowledge of enteral nutritional therapy.

Discussion and conclusions: In general, this research provided nurses with improved knowledge regarding the care of patients using enteral nutrition therapy, contributing to the innovation of care with practices based on scientific evidence. Pre-and post-test analyzes showed that nurses had better knowledge scores on enteral nutritional therapy after the educational intervention using clinical simulation. Implications for clinical nursing practice: Educational interventions based on clinical simulation promote clinical reasoning and decision-making within different levels of nursing praxis.