Evidence-based education and nursing pressure ulcer prevention textbooks: does it match?

The education of nurses has influenced the way of nursing practice for a long time. Nurse educators are required to offer up-to-date educational material, and textbooks are the most frequently used sources of knowledge during a nurse's education.

In this study, researchers investigated the extent to which textbooks were evidence based regarding preventing pressure ulcers and knowing what recommendations to make for nursing students and publishers of nursing textbooks.

Educators at nursing schools in Germany were contacted by telephone to identify the most often used nursing textbooks. The recommendations of the German Expert Standard of Pressure Ulcer Prevention were compared with the content of the textbooks in a content analysis. Additionally, teachers were asked what additional material they were using to help prepare lectures.

Only one of the four analysed textbooks complied with the recommendations of the German Expert Standard. Contents of the other books were incomplete. The authors of some books did not mention any up-to-date scientific evidence. The teachers often used additional material such as the German Expert Standard and research articles to prepare their lectures.

German nursing textbooks were classified into research-based and authoritative texts. Because of the fast development and availability of research findings, one recommendation is that new forms of "textbooks" such as CD ROMs should be considered.