Effects of community health nursing in-school practice education on self-directed learning, core nursing competency, and infection control awareness of nursing school students

Abstract

Objectives This study was to investigate effects of community health nursing in-school practice education on self-directed learning, core nursing competency, and infection control awareness of nursing school students. Methods This study was conducted a pre and post quasi experimental study for single-group with 109 students in the 4th grade of Nursing school at H University, located in G province. The in-school practice training lasted 90 hours for two weeks, in parallel with online and offline learnings such as online lectures, home visits, self-learning, face-to-face simulation practice, and core skill evaluation. Data were collected by online questionnaires, and data analysis was performed with the SPSS win 25.0 program and the corresponding sample T-test. Results It was found that the in-school practice education in community health nursing improved the self-directed learning(t=6.22, p=.000) and core nursing competency(t=6.89, p=.000) of nursing students. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in the infection control awareness(t=1.89, p=.062), but there was significant increase of the awareness of the hand hygiene(t=2.44, p=.016) and linen(t=2.69, p=.008) which were listed in the sub-category. Conclusions This study confirmed the positive effects of the in-school practice that integrates the online-learning and face-to-face simulation for community health nursing science while field clinical practice is limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the future, it is necessary to develop more programs that include various contents embracing field practice and in-school practice adjusted with the characteristics of the local community and to study effective teaching methods.