Background: Lack of correct diagnosis of delirium and considering it as an iatrogenic disease are the most important reasons for lack of correct detection of delirium by health care team. Appropriate training of the nurses on delirium can play an important role in its early diagnosis and prevention.
Objectives: The current study aimed to compare the effects of two training methods on the level of delirium awareness in nurses in the intensive care units (ICUs).
Patients and Methods: The present study was a pretest-posttest clinical trial on two groups conducted in the hospitals affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2014. The qualified subjects were divided into two groups (n = 35 for each) of workshop training and continuous electronic training by random number tabulation. The four-hour workshop training was applied in two days and training content was uploaded on Tehran University of Medical Sciences website for continuous electronic training. The data were collected by a questionnaire containing demographic characteristics and multiple-choice questions on delirium awareness including delirium definition, epidemiology, causes and risk factors, complications, diagnosis and diagnostic means, prevention and treatment with reliability coefficient of r = 0.85. The data were collected before and after the intervention as self-reporting. After collecting the data, the level of awareness of nurses was analyzed through descriptive and analytical statistics of paired and independent T-tests using SPSS ver. 16.
Results: The results showed that 88.1% of the subjects were female. Comparison of mean ± SD showed a significant difference in the electronic training group before and after the intervention (P < 0.002) (before: 5.16 ± 4.6; after: 5.33 ± 5.1). However, there was no significant difference before and after the intervention in the workshop training group (before: 5.16 ± 3.4; after: 5.23 ± 5.1). Comparing the mean ± SD of the results in both groups of workshop and electronic training, there was no significant difference between them before the intervention. However, comparison of mean ± SD of the results after the intervention showed a significant difference between these two groups (P = 0.035).
Conclusions: Given the results of the study, it can be concluded that electronic training had a more effective role in training the nurses regarding the awareness of delirium and can be recommended as a helpful training method in retraining courses targeting the nurses.