What’s NEXT in education: Providing mobile pressure injury prevention education to nursing staff in a VA Community Living Center (CLC) setting.

INTRODUCTION: Providing education to nursing staff in a long-term care setting can prove to be a difficult balancing act between scheduling time for staff to leave the floor, finding an appropriate central location to provide the education, and having sufficient staff coverage.

PURPOSE/SIGNIFCANCE: The purpose of this project was to determine if providing informal short (3-5 minutes) education via a mobile cart to the nursing staff at their working location would improve knowledge of pressure injury prevention and to determine if staff reported satisfaction with the mobile format of education.

METHODOLOGY: A mobile cart with educational materials was taken to 2 floors of the Community Living Centers (CLC) of a VA medical center to provide pressure injury prevention education to the nursing staff as well as residents of the CLC and other interested parties such as nursing students. Participants completed a pre-education assessment of their confidence in pressure injury prevention. A short session was presented on pressure ulcer prevention then the staff participants completed a post-education assessment of their confidence in pressure injury prevention as well as a satisfaction survey regarding the mobile cart.

OUTCOMES : 15 participants completed the pre-education assessment and 14 completed the post-education assessment. 15 participants completed the satisfaction survey. 60% of staff “strongly agreed” that their knowledge of pressure injury prevention was very confident prior to the activity. Of the remaining 40% of staff, 26% reported an increase in knowledge. There was a 100% rating of “strongly agree” that this learning format was beneficial as well as the allotted timeframe.

CONCLUSION: It was determined informal education via a mobile cart proved very satisfactory to nursing staff who demonstrated a knowledge increase regarding pressure injury prevention as well as high satisfaction with the delivery method.