A comparative study on effect of e-learning versus instructor-led method on nurses’ documentation competency

BACKGROUND: Accurate recording of the nursing care indicates the care performance and its quality. It is so that any failure in documentation can be a reason for inadequate patient care. Therefore, improving nurses’ skills in this field with help of effective educational methods is of high importance. Since traditional teaching methods are not suitable for communities with rapid knowledge expansion and constant changes, e-learning methods can be a viable alternative. To show the importance of e-learning methods on nurses’ care reporting skills, this study was performed to compare the e-learning methods with the traditional instructor-led methods. METHODS: This was a quasi-experimental study aimed to compare the effect of two teaching methods (e-learning versus lecture) on nursing documentation and to examine the differences in acquiring competency on documentation between nurses who participated in the e-learning (n = 30) and nurses in a lecture group (n = 31). RESULTS: The results of the present study indicated that statistically there was no significant difference between the two groups. The findings also revealed that statistically there was no significant correlation between the two groups concerning demographic variables. However, we believe that due to benefits of e-learning compared to traditional instructor-led method, and according to their equal effect on nurses’ documentation competency, e-learning can be a qualified substitute for traditional instructor-led method. CONCLUSIONS: E-learning as a student-centered method can promote competency of the nurses on documentation similar to the lecture method. Therefore, e-learning can be used to facilitate the implementation of nursing educational programs.