Effect of Caring Behavior: A study protocol of caring-based education program

Abstract   Caring behavior is essential and crucial to nursing, and it has become an important component in providing appropriate nursing care to patients. Critical care nurses in critical care settings must focus on providing "total support" for bodily systems and organ functions while monitoring and manipulating the characteristics of critically ill patients who are physiologically decompensated, unconscious, delirious, and immunocompromised. This study aims to determine the effect(s) of a caring-based education program on critical care nurses' caring behavior, efficacy, and work environment in Penang public hospitals. The study objectives are to determine the caring behavior, caring efficacy, and healthy work environment among critical care nurses working in critical care settings, to determine the relationship between the caring behavior and demographic data, to determine the relationship between the caring behavior and the healthy work environment and to determine the effect(s) of a caring-based education program on caring' behavior, caring efficacy and healthy work environment between the intervention group and control group among critical care nurses before and after the program. This study will employ a quasi-experimental design with two groups: control (n = 40) and intervention (n = 40) from critical care settings in Penang public hospitals. This study will use a questionnaire consisting of Demographic Data, Caring Behavior Inventory 24 (CBI-24), Caring Efficacy Scale (CES), and Healthy Working Environment Assessment Tools (HWEAT). There will be five one-hour sessions dedicated to the caring-based education program. The program will begin with the administration of a pre-test, and it will end with the administration of a post-test after the last session. The limitation of this study is being done in Penang public hospitals and involves critical care nurses only. The data will be analyzed using descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation coefficient, independent t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and paired t-test. It is expected that the implementation of a caring-based education program will lead to an improvement in critical care nurses' caring behavior. The implications of this study may contribute to patient safety and quality of care, healthcare costs and efficiency, nurse satisfaction and work environments, medication management and error prevention, patient and family satisfaction, professional development and education, interpersonal relationships, and patient comfort