the effect of virtual interactive education versus in-person workshop on nurses’ knowledge and performance in neonatal skin care in neonatal intensive care units: a quasi-experimental study

Background: given the international recognition concerning the importance of digital literacy, and the increasing understanding of its importance in active learning, virtual education has recently attracted a great deal of attention. this method has provided an opportunity for teaching innovation in times of covid-19. in this study, we aimed to compare the effects of virtual interactive education on improving nurses’ knowledge and performance in neonatal skin care. methods: this quasi-experimental pre-post study was performed on 100 nurses working in the neonatal intensive care units. the participants were divided into three groups, namely the in-person workshop (n=34), virtual interactive education (n=33), and control (n=33). the instruments included association of women’s health, obstetric, and neonatal nurses (awhonn) standardized questionnaire. the t test, exact fisher, and repeated measures ancova were conducted to analyze the data using spss v. 16 software. results: the results revealed a significant difference between the preand post-test scores of workshop and multimedia groups in terms of the mean score of knowledge compared to the control group (p<0.001). similarly, there was a significant difference between the pre- and post-test scores of the workshop and multimedia groups concerning the mean score of performance compared to the control group (p<0.001). the mean score of knowledge and performance increased in both multimedia (20.76±1.30) and workshop groups (15.32±1.95) after the intervention, but the mean score in the multimedia group was more than that of the workshop group (p<0.001). conclusion: according to the results, the virtual multimedia training method could be used as a solution to address the growing demand for training nursing staff provided that we could lay the required foundation and design the right training methods.