Needs assessment application and evaluation of nursing and midwifery continuing education program during the years 1999 to 2000 at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Introduction. The necessity of making improvement on nurse’s knowledge and expertise has led nursing executives of continuing education to evaluate programs. Application of continuing education program should not only be limited to taking part in programs but also it should include evaluation mechanism for measuring the extent of participant’s progress. This pre–post test study was arranged to evaluate the nursing and midwifery C.N.E. programs executed during the years 1999 and 2000 at shiraz university of medical sciences. Methods. A focus group was performed to identify the nurse’s educational needs. Based on the identified needs, 5 workshop & seminars were designed on: communication, oncology nursing, pt. education and drug intervention (for two groups). In sum the sample consisted of 484 nursing and midwifery personnel. Knowledge acquisition of participants was measured by a pre test and post test consisting of multiple choice & essay questions related to subjects presented in each workshop. Furthermore a psychometric evaluation of each program was performed to provide greater insight regarding the participant’s opinion on: teacher’s behavior, program's objective, satisfaction with the program and learner's objective. Results. Most of the participants (83.26%) were female, 16.745 were male. The difference of pre–post test scores were analyzed by t-test which revealed a significant difference from pre to post scores in all of the group, furthermore teaching behavior and learner objective were evaluated by participants significantly better than other variables in the 5 groups P<0.0001 Conclusion. Identifying the relationship between variables affecting quality and effectiveness of programs will led us to continuous evaluation of C.N.E to figure out the different aspects of education process.