Global Neuroscience Nurse Training Begins With a Baseline Assessment of Neuroscience Nursing Knowledge

BACKGROUND: Before implementing an educational intervention, there is a need to establish baseline knowledge levels such that the outcome of said intervention can be fairly evaluated. Before developing a structured nursing educational intervention, we aimed to assess nursing knowledge, nursing confidence regarding that knowledge, and the accuracy of the knowledge. METHODS: We distributed a 50-item validated neurological assessment test (NAT) questionnaire to 70 nurses working at a teaching hospital in Kenya. There were no personal identifiers collected and the NAT was made available in both electronic and paper formats to facilitate responses. RESULTS: The 64 nurses who returned the questionnaire had median knowledge scores of 22% (14% to 32%); median confidence scores of 61% (37% to 87%); and median accuracy scores of 38% (31.3% to 45.6%). There was a strong association between confidence and knowledge ( r2 =0.66; P <0.0001); and between knowledge and accuracy ( r2 =0.35; P <0.0001); but not between confidence accuracy ( r2 =0.03; P =0.112). CONCLUSION: The NAT questionnaire was useful in assessing baseline confidence levels, knowledge, and accuracy of that knowledge. Nurses in this sample had moderate to high confidence that extended beyond the accuracy of their knowledge base. There is a need for targeted international educational interventions to improve neuroscience nursing knowledge.