<p> Foreign-born residents face significant challenges accessing and receiving quality healthcare in the U.S. These obstacles include a lack of information on how to access care, fear, as well as communication and cultural barriers (Portes, Fernandez-Kelly & Light, 2012). Increasing healthcare providers' knowledge regarding a patient's culture as well as endemic rare diseases can serve to reassure and assuage patient discomfort. However, studies focused on educating healthcare providers regarding rare diseases that are restricted to or predominantly found in culturally distinct populations are lacking in the published literature. This knowledge deficit is of concern, since healthcare providers will need to become familiar with these less common diseases as the U.S. population continues to become more culturally diverse (Purnell & Paulanka, 2008). Previously published reports have demonstrated that e-learning, the use of internet technologies to improve knowledge and performance, is an effective method to educate healthcare providers (Caroll, Booth, Papaioannou, Sutton, & Wong, 2008; Childs, S., Blenkinsopp, E., Hall, A., & Walton, G., 2005). The present study explores the use of an e-learning intervention to educate oncology nurses about a specific rare disease, Adult T-Cell Leukemia/Lymphoma (ATLL) and the two cultures affected by this disease; Haitian and Japanese. A validated competency questionnaire was employed to assess Haitian and Japanese cultural awareness as well as ATLL disease-focused knowledge among oncology nurses completing the e-learning intervention versus oncology nurses who did not complete the e-learning intervention. A total of 28 oncology nurses were enrolled; 14 nurses were non-randomly assigned to the e-learning intervention and 14 nurses were not given the e-learning intervention. A change in mean scores (pretest vs. posttest), derived from specific components of the evaluation questionnaire, for oncology nurses who completed an e-learning intervention versus those who did not were as follows: 2.43 versus 0.07 (p = 0.002) for knowledge of ATLL; 2.71 versus -0.07 (p <0.001) for questions related to Japanese Cultural Awareness; and 1.86 versus -0.36 (p = 0.008) for questions related to Haitian Cultural Awareness. These findings suggest that oncology nurses who completed an e-learning intervention demonstrated improved ATLL knowledge, and Japanese and Haitian cultural awareness than those who did not complete the e-learning intervention. This is the first study to assess the amount of knowledge nurses gain by completing an e-learning intervention focusing on a rare disease found in a culturally distinct population. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3560778 |
| Date | 07 June 2013 |
| Creators | Cortese-Peske, Marisa A. |
| Publisher | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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