An educational intervention impact on the quality of nursing records

OBJECTIVE: to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on the quality of nursing records. METHOD: quasi-experimental study with before-and-after design conducted in a hospital. All the nurses in the cardiac intensive care unit of the hospital received the intervention, which consisted of weekly meetings during five months. To collect data, the instrument Quality of Diagnoses, Interventions and Outcomes was applied to the patients’ charts in two moments: baseline and after intervention. RESULTS: the educational intervention had an impact on the quality of the records, since most of the items presented a significant increase in their mean values after the intervention, despite the low values in the two moments. CONCLUSION: the educational intervention proved to be effective at improving the quality of nursing records and a lack of quality was identified in the evaluated records, revealed by the low mean values and by the weakness of some questions presented in the items, which did not present a significant increase. Therefore, educational actions focused on real clinical cases may have positive implications for nursing practice.