Abstract:

Background
Recent evidence has shown that one of the main reasons of medication errors made by nursing students is medication knowledge deficit. It is necessary to enhance nursing students’ medication knowledge in order to provide a better patient safety care. With the development and innovation of the mobile devices, such as mobile phone, the learning becomes more available and accessible. Short message service (SMS) is one of most popular communication ways using mobile phones among young generation. It may serve as a channel to deliver learning materials to the contemporary students. Therefore, this study is going to develop a SMS supplement learning material of medication and to examine its effectiveness. Before conducting the main study, this preliminary study was undertaken first.

Purpose
The aims of this preliminary study were to develop the supplement learning materials of medication through mobile phones and to evaluate the effectiveness of using mobile phone SMS message in enhancing knowledge of medications among nursing students.

Methods
A two-group experimental design was applied in this study. A convenience sample of 58 nursing students who were taking the pharmacology course at a university was invited to participate in the study. The participants were randomly assigned to intervention group (n = 29) and comparison group (n = 29). Meanwhile, the SMS medication learning materials were developed by researchers. It had been reviewed by three experts and had been revised based on their suggestions and comments. The intervention group received the learning materials sent by SMS twice per day for 10 days and the comparison group didn’t. Data were collected at baseline and two weeks following the intervention from October to November 2010. The questionnaire included demographic information, medication knowledge questionnaire (MKQ), and satisfaction level questionnaire.

Results
Fifty-three participants with a mean age of 19.28 years (SD = 0.77) completed this study (29 in the experimental group and 24 in the comparison group). There were no statistically significant differences in baseline characteristics and pre-intervention MKQ score between the two groups. The repeated measures ANOVA was used to test the effectiveness of the intervention. There were no significant interaction effect between group and time (F = 1.844, p = .18). However, in a paired t-test, the intervention group has shown significant increase in MKQ score after the intervention (t = -3.179, p = .004), but the comparison group did not have significant increase in MKQ score (t = -1.753, p = .093). Overall, the mean satisfaction level with the SMS intervention among nursing students was 3.54 on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = very dissatisfied; 5 = very satisfied).

Conclusions
The findings of this preliminary study have shown that there were no significant differences between two groups after intervention, although the students’ medication knowledge score did significantly increase within the intervention group. Based on the results of this study and suggestions and comments from the participants, the contents of learning materials will be revised and delivering time will also be changed. Additionally, sample size, prevention of contamination, and long-term effects of the intervention will be taken care of in the main study.

Keywords:

Short message service (SMS), nursing students, m-learning, medication knowledge.