Teaching differential diagnosis to nurse practitioner students in a distance program

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Nursing Education
• Distance Learning Pedagogy

Background:

• Traditional teaching methods are challenging for distance learning nurse practitioner students.
• Interactive Case Studies (ICS) were developed to address this pedagogical gap.
• Kolb's experiential learning theory informed the ICS design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if learning outcomes for distance learning students using ICS are equivalent to on-campus students.
• To compare the accuracy of differential diagnosis lists generated by both student groups.
• To assess clinical significance of learning outcome differences.

Main Methods:

• An interactive case study (ICS) was implemented for distance learning students.
• Differential diagnosis list accuracy was compared between online and on-campus students.
• Equivalency testing was used to assess clinical significance on data from 291 students.

Main Results:

• The ICS responses from distance learning and on-campus students differed by 4.9%.
• This difference was within the pre-defined 10% equivalence margin.
• Narrative data corroborated the quantitative findings.

Conclusions:

• Interactive Case Studies (ICS) provide equivalent differential diagnosis education for nurse practitioner students regardless of learning modality.
• This innovative teaching strategy successfully bridges the gap in distance education.
• The findings support the use of ICS for enhancing differential diagnosis training in online nursing programs.