An educational intervention to improve nurses’ knowledge and self-confidence: An integrated literature review

Purpose: To provide educational intervention to improve the knowledge and self-confidence of nurses in ambulatory and urgent care clinics in detecting early deterioration, intervening, and evaluating changes in patient condition using a consistent assessment tool. A review of the organization policy indicated a process to call the medical alert response team (MAR). However, there was no established algorithm for nurses to escalate or implement interventions when they noticed a change in a patient condition. An informal survey of ten assistant nurse managers in the ambulatory and urgent care clinics asked about their calling process for MAR and what interventions are used yielded inconsistent practices across the board. An unofficial survey of clinic nurses suggested a lack of knowledge and self-confidence in nurses for recognizing and implementing appropriate intervention when there is a change in a patient condition.
Method: Extensive literature search using CINAHL and PubMed databases for peer-reviewed articles relevant to the topic. 
Results: An educational intervention that enhances nurses’ knowledge and self-confidence in recognizing and activating appropriate intervention empowers nurses to utilize critical thinking and clinical judgment to provide high quality and safe care to their patients, thus decreasing failure to resuscitate.
Conclusions and Implications to practice: There is a need to provide educational intervention to improve the knowledge and self-confidence of nurses in ambulatory and urgent care clinics in detecting early deterioration, intervening, and evaluating changes in patient condition using a consistent assessment tool.