Enhancing nasogastric tube insertion skill performance by using updated checklist among nursing students

Nasogastric tube (NGT) insertion is one of the most commonly performed procedures for critically ill patients through the nostril or mouth into the stomach, which is indicated for multiple reasons.

This study is, therefore, aimed to enhance the NGT insertion skill performance of third-year nursing students using the updated checklist, 2021.

A facility-based pre-post intervention study was conducted among third-year nursing students of the School of Nursing, Jimma University. An updated checklist and intervention package were used among 26 randomly selected nursing students. The collected data was entered into EpiData version 3.1, EpiData Association, Denmark and exported to SPSS version 23, IBM Corp, Armonk, NewYork for analysis. Descriptive statistics were made for each item and Paired T-test analysis was conducted to summarize the findings.

The highest NGT skill insertion performance score from 40% before the intervention was 35; however, after the intervention, the score increased to 40.3. Their mean score in NGT skill performance was increased by 11 after the intervention of implementing the intervention package using the updated checklist from 26.5 ±5 0.3 the pre-intervention to 37.8 ±5 1.7 post-intervention. The finding indicated that the improvement was statistically significant at p < 0.001.

Implementing an intervention package and employing an updated NGT insertion checklist improved the performance of third-year nursing students' NGT insertion skills by an average of 11 points compared to their pre-test scores. A large-scale control randomized trial study was recommended to control for the effects of confounding factors on the implementation of intervention packages.