Development of an Internet-based Substance Abuse Continuing Education Course for Practicing Registered Nurses

Substance abuse continues to be a heath care issue. Traditional baccalaureate nursing education does not provide an adequate amount of instruction in substance abuse issues. There is a need for an educational tool for substance abuse topics to fulfill the gap between undergraduate nursing education and clinical setting. Practicing nurses may need an intervention to increase their knowledge regarding substance abuse topics.

In order to understand curriculum differences between different schools of nursing data was collected from thirty four schools of nursing in the state of North Carolina. Based on the analysis of the collected data an Internet based continuing education course was created for registered nurses to fulfill the gap in knowledge regarding substance abuse issues.

A total of twenty one nurses participated in the course and pretest and posttest results were analyzed during the evaluation phase of this project. The evaluation of the project’s effectiveness was based on determining the progress participants made after taking this course. The pretest and posttest in the course were identical. The differences in pretest and posttest scores of course participants were tested using a pared t-test The participants showed significant increase in knowledge after taking Substance Abuse Continuing Education Course for Registered Nurses. The mean score for the posttest (87.7) was statistically significantly higher (p < .01) compared to mean pre-test score of 68.0

The project evaluation revealed a statistically significant increase in knowledge regarding substance abuse issues after taking the course. While designing this course an attempt was made to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the topics related to substance abuse that may be of importance for the registered nurse and include those topics into the course.