Educating Intensive Care Nurses in Pressure Injury Staging by Using Analogy: A Quasi-experimental Study.

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Clinical Skills Training
• Pressure Injury Management

Background:

• Accurate pressure injury (PI) staging is crucial for effective patient care and treatment planning in intensive care units (ICUs).
• Traditional teaching methods may not always yield optimal learning outcomes for complex clinical skills like PI staging.
• Novel pedagogical approaches are needed to enhance nurses' proficiency in PI assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the effectiveness of analogy-based teaching versus traditional teaching methods for pressure injury staging education among ICU nurses.
• To evaluate the impact of these teaching techniques on immediate post-training knowledge and long-term knowledge retention.

Main Methods:

• A quasi-experimental study involving 60 ICU nurses, divided into traditional and analogy-based teaching groups.
• Pretest, posttest, and retention test (4 weeks later) were administered to assess knowledge of PI staging.
• Statistical analysis included Mann-Whitney U test, two-way mixed ANOVA, and Pearson correlation.

Main Results:

• The analogy-based group had significantly lower pretest scores but achieved significantly higher posttest and retention test scores compared to the traditional group.
• The intervention group demonstrated superior performance immediately after training and four weeks later.
• P-values indicated statistically significant differences in favor of the analogy-based method (P < .001 for posttest, P = .04 for retention).

Conclusions:

• Analogy-based teaching is a more effective method for training nurses in pressure injury staging than traditional techniques.
• This method leads to better immediate and sustained understanding of PI staging criteria.
• The study recommends incorporating analogy-based teaching into nursing curricula for PI staging education.