Effectiveness of an educational workshop for improving ICU nurses` knowledge on managing dysphagia in patients with tracheostomy at government hospitals in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Background: Adult patients with tracheostomy are a medically complex population. Tracheostomy insertion is a common procedure seen in Intensive Care Unit (ICU} settings to manage many critical patients by means of an artificial airway. But the tracheostomy indication is associated with several complications. Therefore, dysphagia is one of the main complications that tracheostomy leads to, where 11% to 93% of patients following tracheostomy have been identified with dysphagia in various studies. The management of dysphagia is a multidisciplinary team approach, and the nurses are one of the health professionals in this team. Therefore, the nurses` knowledge of the management process of dysphagia is important to improve the Quality of Life (QoL) of patients with tracheostomy. Objective/s: The objectives of this study were to describe nurses` knowledge regarding dysphagia management in patients with tracheostomy before and after conducting an educational workshop and to describe the nurses’ perspectives on the effectiveness of the educational workshop. Methods: The pre-post interventional study design compared nurses' knowledge differences after attending an educational workshop on dysphagia management in tracheostomy patients. There were sixty participants (n = 60) included, and they were selected by purposive sampling and the snowballing technique. The data was gathered through an online survey. The educational workshop was planned based on the outcomes of the needs assessment and the nurses` knowledge assessed by providing pre and post-test questionnaires. Paired-sample t-tests were used to identify whether there is a significant improvement in the nurses` knowledge after the educational workshop. Results: The findings showed that the designed online workshop significantly improved nurses’ knowledge of managing dysphagia in tracheostomy patients t (59) =-25.755, p =.000. Further, the perceived effectiveness of the workshop, as reported by nurses, indicated that the workshop is highly effective and helpful in improving their knowledge regarding dysphagia management in patients with tracheostomy. Conclusion/s: The results of the present study showed that the nurses had moderate knowledge regarding dysphagia management in patients with tracheostomy before conducting the educational workshop. However, after conducting the educational workshop, the mean scores of nurses increased to the high knowledge level. Therefore, the study concludes that the educational workshop undertaken is an effective method to improve nurses' knowledge on the management of dysphagia in patients with tracheostomy.