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Putting education into action : supporting urinary continence amongst older adults in acute care through interprofessional staff education

University of British Columbia

Background: Many older adults experience urinary incontinence (UI) and as a result suffer from a variety of physical, emotional, and social consequences. Despite the presence of an interprofessional team to support urinary continence in hospital-based care, studies show that the team has insufficient knowledge to manage patients’ UI. Purpose: To assess changes in UI knowledge among an interprofessional hospital-based team after following an evidence-based educational intervention. The study also aims to better understand the facilitators and barriers to evidence-based learning in a hospital-based setting. Sample/Methods: 32 participants including registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists from an older adult unit in an urban community hospital participated in the study. Participants met the pre/post-test study design inclusion criteria by completing the UI pre-test, 2/3 educational interventions and UI post-test. Changes in pre/post-test scores were analyzed to assess the effectiveness of the educational intervention. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted after post-test data collection to gain an in-depth understanding of the facilitators and barriers to learning within the context of the research site. Results: Overall UI knowledge showed statistically higher post-test scores (p = .001). Nevertheless when broken down into foundational and advanced knowledge, the former improved (p = .005) where the latter showed no statistically significant improvement (p = .103). Qualitative results described many facilitators and barriers within the following categories: 1) attempting to learn in the workplace, 2) putting evidence-based education into action and 3) learning and providing care within an interprofessional team. Implications: The Putting Education into Action study supports the need for a critical evaluation of current trends in hospital-based workplace learning. It provides suggestions for effective workplace learning and supports the need for further education-based studies in order to continue learning how to best keep nursing and allied health professional up to date with evidence-based practices that are continuously evolving within healthcare research.

Text

2014-03-10

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/46174

Nursing

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/