Know HBV: Online Education and Training Program
The development of the Know HBV online training and certification tool specifically designed for nursing students stems from the need for comprehensive instruction regarding hepatitis B in the current nursing school curriculum offered in both the United States and in China. Nurse education consists of the theoretical and practical training to prepare nurses for their duties as nursing care professionals. Based on peer-reviewed literature, nurse education in both the US and China lacks a comprehensive approach to viral hepatitis and HBV training and blood safety. Current training tools, and qualitative accounts from key informants within the nursing field, reveal much of the training available does not adequately portray the full effect of the hepatitis B virus for those who are infected as well as the health care providers who monitor their health. In fact, many existing tools are not up-to-date with the most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) released by the US CDC in September 2008 regarding hepatitis B; for example, Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs) are rarely recognized as a high-risk population while chronic hepatitis B infection also receives less attention than necessary.
While the need for new and updated curriculum is clear, the delivery of such curriculum must be tailored to the population of focus, nursing students at Shandong University. A web-based tool will allow for easy dissemination of the new curriculum and training materials, as the implementation is immediate upon posting the tool on the internet. In addition, any student with access to the internet will easily be able to access the training program. Another advantage of developing a web-based program is that pre- and post-tests for knowledge assessment will be embedded within the tool, providing immediate data collection for evaluation purposes to assess the success of the education tool. Developing the online training tool as a complete and packaged curriculum will ultimately lead to a durable product that can easily be replicated in other schools, venues, and countries, one of the core principles for all APAVH supported projects.
In the Know HBV online training tool, developed in both English and Mandarin/Simplified Chinese, students will be learning, through different interactive modules, general background information on hepatitis B, how to educate their patients, as well as basic occupational safety. While the majority of the program will include visual slides, accompanied by an audio track, there will also be embedded quizzes which will test the student’s knowledge at the end of each module. Incorrect or correct answers will prompt the program to re-emphasize certain points or to allow them to move on to the next module. Instructional videos will also make this training tool unique to nursing students as it will provide them with visuals of basic injection safety, preparation and administration of the hepatitis B vaccine, as well as how the nursing students can protect themselves from being infected.
