A novel method for psychotropic drugs education: An interventional study

Abstract Background: Familiarity with and management of drugs side-effects are among nurses’ main educational needs with respect to pharmacological care in psychiatry departments. This study aimed to determine the effects of psychoactive drugs education through mobile phone and group discussion on nursing students’ attitude, satisfaction, and learning. Methods: This interventional study was done in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in 2018. The participants included 40 nursing students passing the mental health apprenticeship in their 6 th educational semester. The 32 students with inclusion criteria were randomly divided into two groups each containing 16 subjects. The first group underwent the educational intervention through group discussion within the first two weeks of apprenticeship. The second group, on the other hand, received the educational intervention through mobile phones over the second two weeks of the course. The students’ learning, attitude, and satisfaction were assessed before and two weeks after the intervention and were compared two groups. After all, the data were entered into the SPSS statistical software, version 16 and were analyzed using descriptive and inferential (paired and independent t-test) statistics. P<0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: The results showed a significant difference in the two groups’ rate of learning before and after the intervention (p=0.00). However, no significant difference was found between the two groups in this regard (p=0.158). The results also revealed a significant difference in the two groups’ satisfaction with the instruction method before and after the intervention. A significant difference was also observed between the two groups in this regard (p=0.043). Finally, the results indicated that the students in the mobile phone group developed a significantly more positive attitude after the intervention compared to baseline (p=0.038). Conclusions: The study results demonstrated that mobile teaching methods could be effective in students’ learning, satisfaction, and attitude. Thus, further studies are recommended to be conducted on other medical and nursing apprenticeships, so that such methods can be used in clinical education in case of obtaining similar results.