Knowledge and confidence gains after a COVID-19 vaccine continuing education program developed for nurse practitioners.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has been marked by rapid innovation in vaccine development. Given that nurse practitioners (NPs) are often involved in vaccine counseling and administration, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners developed a continuing education (CE) series that covered COVID-19 vaccine development, recommendations, administration, and solutions for overcoming hesitancy. In 2020 and 2021, three separate live webinars were delivered; each webinar was updated with the latest vaccine recommendations and was then archived in an enduring format for up to 4 months. The goal of this study was to assess changes in preactivity and postactivity knowledge and confidence and to qualitatively report other learner outcomes. Across the three webinars, 3,580 unique learners who self-reported seeing patients eligible for COVID-19 vaccination completed at least one activity. Knowledge and competence improved from the preactivity to postactivity survey in all webinars, with the overall rates of correct answers increasing by 30% after webinar 1, 37% after webinar 2, and 28% after webinar 3 (all p < .001). Furthermore, mean confidence in learner's ability to address vaccine hesitancy improved across all three webinars (range, 31-32%; all p < .001). The majority of learners indicated that they planned to incorporate lessons from the activity into their clinical practice (range, 85-87%). In postactivity surveys, vaccine hesitancy was identified as an ongoing barrier by up to 33% of learners. In conclusion, this CE activity improved learner knowledge, competence, and confidence related to COVID-19 vaccination and underscores the importance of up-to-date CE targeted to NPs.

Measuring the impact of a COVID-19 continuing education program.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rapidly shifting health care environment, with frequent changes to best practices, which can lead to knowledge and practice gaps among health care providers, including nurse practitioners (NPs). The purpose of this paper was to describe a continuing education (CE) program developed to address COVID-19 knowledge gaps and to report on the changes in knowledge, competence, and confidence following program completion. The CE program was a 2.5 to 2.67 contact hour webinar delivered in July 2020, October 2020, and February 2021. Content included COVID-19 prevention, diagnosis, and management and was updated before the second and third webinars. Changes in content and webinar audience participation in the question and answer portion were reflected in the CE credit awarded. Preactivity and postactivity knowledge, competence, and confidence levels were assessed among activity completers. Changes between the preactivity and postactivity evaluation were compared. A total of 2,901 learners were included in the analysis, of whom 91.6% were NPs. Overall, baseline knowledge of COVID-19 transmission, diagnosis, and treatment was low. Substantial improvements in knowledge, competence, and confidence were reported from baseline to postactivity evaluation, with increases of 47-73% overall. Furthermore, learner confidence in identifying patients at risk for severe COVID-19 and counseling patients on prevention and transmission significantly increased. Despite plans to implement strategies to improve COVID-19 management, several barriers to uptake were identified. The rapid development of a COVID-19 CE program resulted in substantial gains in NP knowledge related to prevention, diagnosis, and management, with possible implications for nearly 68,000 patient encounters per month.