Effect of Nursing Informatics' Training Program on Nurses' Proficiency in Remote Follow-Up for Liver Transplant Recipients

Background: Nursing informatics is expanding and developing with health information technology and becoming an essential component of all nursing practice areas particularly in monitoring of the organ transplanted recipients. Aim: To evaluate the effect of nursing informatics' training program on nurses' proficiency in remote follow-up for liver-transplant recipients. Research design: Quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design. Sitting: The present study was carried out at the Liver Transplantation follow-up Unit, National Liver Institute, Menoufia Governorate, Egypt. Sample: Convenient sample of all available nurses (50) divided random into intervention and control groups. Tools: Two tools were used; assessment questionnaire and Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment Tool (NICAT). Results: All the 50 nurses completed the instructional program, but there was no clear differentiation between the interventional and control participants at the pretest phase in terms of the Nursing informatics competence and its elements (p = 0.54). However, in the post-test phase, the interventional nurses' Nursing informatics competence and its elements considerably improved with a big effect size in comparison to the control nurses (p=0.001), this distinction demonstrated the intervention nurses' competence in the post-test phase. The informatics literacy component had the biggest mean difference in the interventional group, whereas the informatics management skills element had the least overall mean difference. Conclusions: The intervention program obviously enhanced nursing informatics competence in all its dimension values, which suggested that it was helpful in raising the nursing informatics competence of nurses working in liver transplant unit. Recommendations: This program should be essentially applied in all health sectors for enhancing nurses' nursing informatics proficiency.