Effectiveness of an Educational Intervention on Clinical Competency among Mental Health Nurses Working at a Government Mental Health Hospital: A Quasi-experimental Study

Mental health nurses play an important role in caring for patients with mental illnesses. In order to provide comprehensive mental health nursing care, it is important to establish periodic educational interventions about mental health and psychiatric nursing in any mental health institution. The presence of frequent educational programs can lead to improvements in mental health nurses' clinical competency.

To evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention on the clinical competency of mental health nurses.

A quasi-experiment study pretest and posttest with one group study design were conducted among 80 nurses in a large mental health hospital in Tabuk city, Saudi Arabia. Data were collected by using the clinical competence evaluation in mental health nurses scale to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention on the clinical competency of mental health nurses by comparing the result of the pretest and posttest scores.

The total score for the pre-test was (74.83±14.25/Average), and then the score increased dramatically for the post-test (96.18±26.53/Good) also, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicated that Post-test (Mean rank=102) significantly higher than pre-test (Mean rank=59) (U=1480, p<0.001). As a result of the current study, the program showed great effectiveness (p<0.001) with an advantage for post-test.

The collected data analysis revealed a statistically significant positive effect of educational programs on improving mental health clinical competency, hence, Healthcare organizations and senior decision-makers should develop well designed periodic mental health programs that involve nurses who have a master's and doctorate degrees in mental health nursing to enhance mental health clinical competency.