Kirkpatrick's evaluation of the effect of a nursing innovation team training for clinical nurses

This study aims to design a 100-h training programme for nursing innovation teams and to evaluate the effect of this training programme using Kirkpatrick's model.

The innovative capability of nurses is a powerful driver for the development of the nursing discipline, and it is currently at a low to medium level in China. Innovation competency development has become a research trend in nurses' in-service education, but only changes in nursing innovation behaviours before and after training have been evaluated. The cascading, continuous assessment tools are rarely used.

This is a quasi-experimental research design: pretest and posttest design. Totally, 61 clinical nurses from Hangzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine were enrolled for innovation training. This innovation team training programme consisted of a 36-h theoretical training phase and a 64-h collaborative training phase. The four levels of Kirkpatrick's model, that is, reaction, learning, behaviour, and result, were applied for the evaluation together with questionnaires.

At reaction level, the nurses' attendance was over 85% in two phases. The differences between nurse organizational innovation climate scores of tested nurses before and after training were statistically significant (t = -22.559, P < .001). At learning level, there were statistically significant differences between nurses' innovation self-efficacy scale scores of tested nurses before and after training (t = -16.832, P < .001). At behaviour level, the nursing innovation behaviour scale scores of tested nurses were significantly higher after training (t = -18.950, P < .001) than before the training. At result level, the clinical nurse innovation ability of tested nurses after the training were higher than before the training (t = -26.275, P < .001). The numbers of patent applications, granted patents, application for scientific research projects, sponsored scientific research projects, and papers published by team members after the training were larger than those before training (Z = -2.032, P = .042).

Kirkpatrick's model can evaluate the effectiveness of nursing innovation training for clinical nurses. The nursing innovation training is beneficial to improve nurses' innovation capacity, organizational innovation climate and innovation self-efficacy, and nursing innovation behaviour and promote the output of research and innovation projects.

Managers can flexibly develop training modules with regional characteristics based on this programme to effectively improve the innovation ability of clinical nurses, thus meeting the urgent demand for innovative nursing talents and the rapid development of nursing disciplines.