Effectiveness of Multimedia Nursing Instruction in Nasogastric Tube Care by Foreign Caregivers in Taiwan: A randomized control study

Purpose: Since 2010, Taiwan has become an aging society. Some of the elderly and patients with chronic disease rely on foreign caregivers for long-term care. The care-giving skills of these foreign caregivers greatly influences their clients. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of multimedia nursing instruction on the knowledge and skill for nasogastric tube (NGT) care by Foreign caregivers. Methods: This randomized control study was carried out in the rehabilitation wards of a district hospital in Taiwan. Twenty-two cases were recruited for the experimental group and twenty-one for the control group from two rehabilitation wards by cluster sampling. After the pretest for NGT feeding knowledge and skill, the experimental group received multimedia nursing instruction while the control group received routine education. A posttest of NGT feeding knowledge was performed immediately after intervention and skills continued to be evaluated on days 1, 3, and 14. The descriptive and inferential analyses of data were performed by SPSS/PC 22.0. Results: The demographic data of experimental and control groups were homogeneous. The pretest of knowledge and skill for two groups were no significant. After multimedia nursing instruction, the knowledge of the experimental group for NGT feeding showed more improvement compared to the control group (p＜.01). Regarding skill of NGT feeding, the posttest results of the experimental group were better than the control group on day 1 (p＜.01), day 3 (p＜.01) and day 14 (p＜.01). Conclusions: For basic needs of the care technology such as NTG care, applying multimedia nursing instruction could improve the knowledge and skills of foreign caregivers in NGT care. Attention should be paid to the use of multimedia and teaching materials in the native language of foreign caregivers.