| Description |
As the prevalence of chronic disease and illness continues to rise and the healthcare industry faces increased staffing shortages, the demand for primary care continues to outpace our healthcare system's ability to supply a robust primary care workforce and guarantee access to primary care for those in need. A robust primary care system will play an essential role in disease prevention and control that will alleviate pressure from the rest of the system. Registered nurses (RNs) are in a unique position to help fill those gaps in primary care access by becoming members of interdisciplinary teams where they serve as care managers, lead telehealth visits, or offer nurse-led visits for common low complexity primary care concerns. Unfortunately, the US nursing education system is unprepared to train nurses for these roles and then integrate them into a system where they can practice at the top of their licensure to increase access to primary care. A fundamental needed change is the integration of primary care nursing concepts into undergraduate nursing program curricula. The University of Utah College of Nursing Nurse Education, Practice, Quality and Retention (NEPQR) Program, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) developed 13 online modules to expose prelicensure nursing students to primary care concepts. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the results of integrating online primary care modules into prelicensure nursing curricula to determine if they are effective in increasing prelicensure students' self-perceived competence in performing nursing tasks related to primary care. To do so, a cross-sectional survey was designed and administered to five cohorts of prelicensure students ranging from those in their first week of school who had completed no modules to those a week from graduation who had completed all 13. Survey data were analyzed using one-and-two-sided t-tests and findings supported a statistically significant increase (p<.05) for each module in self-perceived competence in primary care nursing skills between cohorts that had and had not completed each of the modules. There was no statistically significant relationship between rural history (t=-0.52; p=.60), rural identification (t=0.66; p=.51), or current rural residence (t=1.00; p=.32) and interest in primary care. There was a significant increase in perceived competence in related primary care topics after completion of each module. These modules and the survey are important steps in creating and evaluating primary care education, however further research is needed to determine if the increase in perceived competence is the result of completing the modules or if there are other confounding factors. Further research is necessary to identify other factors that positively impact new graduate RN interest in primary care and establish the effect of primary care education on interest in or attitude toward primary care. |
