Improving the informatics competency of critical care nurses: results of an interventional study in the southeast of Iran

BACKGROUND: Nursing informatics (NI) along with growth and development of health information technology (HIT) is becoming a fundamental part of all domains of nursing practice especially in critical care settings. Nurses are expected to equip with NI competency for providing patient-centered evidence-based care. Therefore, it is important and necessary to improve nurses’ NI competency through educational programs for effective using of HIT. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a training program on NI competency of critical care nurses. METHODS: This interventional study was conducted in 2019. Stratified sampling technique was used to select 60 nurses working in critical care units of three hospitals affiliated with a large University of Medical Sciences in the southeast of Iran. These nurses were assigned randomly and equally to the control and intervention groups. NI competency was trained to the intervention group in a three-day workshop. Data were collected using demographic questionnaire and the adapted Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment Tool (NICAT) before and 1 month after the intervention. Rahman in the US (2015) developed and validated the original NICAT to assess self-reported NI competency of nurses with 30 items and three dimensions (Computer literacy, Informatics literacy Information management skills). The NICAT is scored on a five-point Likert scale and the overall score ranges from 30 to150. Two medical informatics specialists and eight nursing faculty members approved the validity of the adapted version of NICAT and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha (95%). RESULTS: All 60 participants completed the educational program and returned the completed questionnaire. Majority of participants in the intervention and control groups were female (83.30%), married nurses (70.90, 73.30%) aged 30–40 years (51.6, 35.5%). In the pretest stage, both intervention and control groups were competent in terms of the NI competency and its dimensions, and no significant difference was observed between them (p = 0.65). However, in the posttest, the NI competency and its dimensions in the intervention group significantly increased with a large effect size compared with the control group (p = 0.001). This difference showed that the intervention group was proficient in the posttest stage. The highest mean difference in the intervention group was associated with the informatics literacy dimension and the lowest mean difference was associated with the informatics management skills dimension. CONCLUSIONS: The improved scores of NI competency and its dimensions after using the training program implied the effectiveness of this method in enhancing the NI competency of nurses working in the critical care units. The application of the training program in diverse domains of nursing practice shows its high efficiency. The project is fundamental for improving nurses’ NI competency through continuous educational programs in Iran, other cultures and contexts.