Mandatory continuing education: what the research tells us.

The development of continuing education in nursing closely parallels that of adult education. The primary models researchers have used in studying nursing have been the paradigms of adult education. In today's society, rapid development of technology and expansion of knowledge have made necessary a frequent update of nursing skills. This need in turn has led to mandatory continuing education (CE).

Values held by nursing faculty and students in a university setting.

An ever-expanding wealth of life-preserving high technology and scientific knowledge, coupled with expanded autonomy of nurses, has created for them ethical and moral dilemmas. As society's values are changing, manifested by an accelerated crime rate, malfeasance in high places, and seeming social indifference, have nurses maintained their ethical equilibrium? This article reports the findings of a descriptive study that examined the professional and personal values of nursing faculty in a large midwestern school of nursing and compares them with those of generic students entering the program. Faculty demonstrated a significantly higher commitment to the American Association of College of Nursing professional value, human dignity, than to the values of equality (P less than .05) and esthetics (P less than .01). Also, there was a significantly higher commitment to altruism than esthetics (P less than .05). Results showed that entering students were more alike on personal values (Rokeach Values Survey) than different from the faculty who teach them.

Teaching methodologies: knowledge acquisition and retention.

In studying the curriculum of a nursing program, knowledge acquisition and retention by nursing students is a primary concern of nursing instructors. The purpose of this study was to determine if a lecture which stimulated several senses would significantly increase knowledge acquisition and retention compared to lectures that stimulate only the auditory sense. Forty-three, junior year, diploma nursing students who had essentially the same clinical experience were the subjects randomly assigned to either Group A or B for this study. Group A (control group) attended a formal lecture on "Spinal Cord Injuries" which stimulated only the auditory sense. Group B (experimental group) attended a lecture on the same subject which stimulated the auditory, visual, and tactile senses. A pretest was given to evaluate the knowledge base prior to the lecture, a posttest was given immediately after the lecture to evaluate initial knowledge acquisition, and a retention test was given three weeks later to evaluate amount of knowledge retained. Students attending the multimodal lecture demonstrated a significantly higher retention test score at the .05 level although they did not demonstrate a significantly higher gain score from pretest to posttest.