Improving nursing practice through continuing nursing education

Since its establishment in 1992 nursing has been one of the leading components in the Atlanta–Tbilisi Health Partnership (currently US NGO - Partners for International Development (PfID) and Georgian NGO – Partners for Health (PfH)). Partnership nurses from both Georgias have made an extensive effort to improve the knowledge level and professional acceptance of the profession of nursing in Georgia with a model which includes enhancing skills of practicing nurses, strengthening the political base of nursing within the country, and the implementation of a university based program for nursing education. In a Country with no University based education system for nurses, no countrywide competency examination or licensure, nearly 400,000 USD have been expended since 1992 to obtain our current level of results. Four Georgian partnership nurse trainers were prepared and certified as nurse educators after completion of a semester long Teaching Institute at the Emory School of Nursing in 2005, where they developed more then 40 continuing education (CE) courses and a nursing baccalaureate curriculum tailored to Georgian needs. Under the current partnership (2002-2006) funded through the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) and others, PfID and PfH have been working with two Partner Hospitals; Iashvili Children's Hospital (CCH) and National Medical Center (NMC). The trainers provided weekly CE courses for one year to five groups of nurses from both hospitals in Medical-Surgical, Pediatric, Neonatal Nursing, and Midwifery. Trainings were successfully completed by 146 nurses, who attended at least 75% of classes; completed of post-test with at least an 80% grade; completed a final exam with at least a 75% grade. A quantitative study was designed to evaluate the impact of nursing courses on the staff by assessing for knowledge retention of learned skills, and skill application in practice. Knowledge retention in nurses sampled (n =72) for FY 2006 was 85%. The percentage of targeted nurses applying training 100% of the time for FY 2006 was 75 %. The findings FY2006 in skill application exceeded the results of a similar study in FY2004 by 21%.