Strategies for Continuous Nursing Education: A qualitative Study

Introduction: The unprecedented growth of professional nursing knowledge, rapid changes in the healthcare system and the mandate to maintain their professional competency, nessecitae continuous nursing education and strategies used in the process of continuing education plays an important role in achieving its objectives. This study was conducted to clarify the strategies used in continuing nursing education in Iran. Methods: This is a qualitative study in year 2011, in which a purposeful sample of 28 educational supervisors, nurse managers, and staff nurses participated. Data were collected through unstructured interviews, and were analyzed using content analysis. Results: Three broad conceptual areas were resulted from: “symbolic education”, “normative performance”, and “conscience-centered performance”. Subcategories for symbolic education were “ineffective education” and “education irrelevant to needs”. For normative performance, subcategories included “delivery of minimally required education”, and “apparent implementation of the ordered educational process”. Conscience-centered performance had subcategories of “training coverage for all nurses” and “making education effective”. Conclusion: Competent nursing performance in health system, which may result from effective continuous nursing education, is very important in health system. Therefore it is essential to motivate nurses, supervise and support effective education, in ordr to facilitate their performance improvement.