nurses’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding sexually transmitted infection: a comparison between online and group education

Background: sexually transmitted infections (sti) have numerous complications. nurses can play a crucial role in educating people to prevent and treatment. this study aimed to compare the impact of online and group education on nurses’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding sti.method: this quasi-experimental study was conducted at women and children hospital in diwaniyah, iraq, in 2023. pre-test and post-test were conducted using a questionnaire. follow-up design was also performed. the participants were divided into two groups (n = 50/group) as a whatsapp-based training program, and the group-based training by random allocation. data were analyzed in spss 22 using repeated‑measures anova, the bonferroni correction, kolmogorov-smirnov, levene’s tests, fisher’s exact test, and mann-whitney u test.results: the results showed that both groups had significant improvements in knowledge, attitude, and practice from before to after the intervention (p < 0.001). the group teaching group had significantly higher knowledge and attitude scores (19.80, 42.32) than the online teaching group (18.06, 39.00) (p = 0.008; p = 0.012). both teaching methods were effective in improving practice scores.conclusion: both methods led to significant improvements in all three domains; however, the group-based method was more effective, particularly in improving knowledge and attitudes. future research should also explore the long-term effects of hybrid models on learners’ competencies and patient outcomes.