Development and testing of a CD-ROM based tutorial for nursing students: getting ready for HIPAA

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a CD-ROM tutorial for nursing students to educate them on how the rules and regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) affect them as they engage in patient care activities in hospitals. The project was completed in two parts, the first of which was production of a stand-alone, audio lecture, image and text self-instruction on CD-ROM to distribute to students as they began their clinical experience. The second part compared the effectiveness of learning the HIPAA content via CD-ROM to a text-directed, self study method. Students were pretested and randomly assigned to one of the types of instruction based on their seminar group assignment. One group received the CD-ROM, Getting Started with HIPAA, along with a journal article on HIPAA, while the other (control) group received only the journal article. All students were instructed to prepare for a test on their understanding about HIPAA by the end of the clinical rotation. The test was analyzed, and items clarified to yield a reliable Web-based examination with 20 questions, 18 of which were used in the analysis. The students' scores were analyzed before and after the instruction, and the methods of instruction were compared. The study findings demonstrated significant differences between experimental-group and control-group students' performance on a knowledge test of HIPAA, as well as overall satisfaction with learning the material by CD-ROM among students who used it. The tutorial is now available for all students, and the Web-based examination provides automatic scoring to a preestablished competence level.