Using online teaching resources to increase nursing students' knowledge and assessment skills of skin cancer

Nurses are in an excellent position to teach the public about skin cancer prevention and perform cancer screenings. This study was designed to test an educational intervention intended to teach nursing students about skin cancer so they can reach competence and be certified by faculty to educate their patients. Similarly, students are educated and certified in other areas, namely asthma and naloxone administration. By conducting this quasi-experimental study, the researchers sought to evaluate the effectiveness of adding online skin cancer education to traditional educational methods. Using a quasi-experimental design, we assigned nursing students (n = 146) to either an intervention group, which received an online educational treatment, or to a control group, which did not receive any such treatment. Both groups then completed a post-test measure assessing their knowledge about skin cancer (‘knowledge’), sun protective behaviours (‘behavior’), and perceptions about the role of the nurse in skin cancer prevention (‘role’). Participants in the intervention group had significantly higher scores on the ‘behavior’ and ‘role’ measures, suggesting that the intervention had successfully impacted these dimensions.