22^nd World Nursing Education Conference

In-service education is a world-wide educational activity that is utilized to ensure the continued competency, knowledge and skill of nurses. It has been highlighted in the literature that in-service is valued by nurses and can lead to practice change. However, little is known about how this change occurs and what drives nurses to transform this knowledge to clinical practice. We asked, “what are the perceived factors that influence nurses to transfer knowledge from in-service education sessions to clinical practice?” A scoping literature review and semi-structured interviews with registered nurses in a large metropolitan hospital in Auckland, New Zealand was undertaken. Interpretative phenomenology analysis of research data was undertaken.

Eleven registered nurses participated. Their experiences will be presented in terms of personhood. Nurse beliefs, values and preferences influenced their decisions to attend in-service, participate meaningfully in in-service and ultimately transfer knowledge to clinical practice. Results of the study indicate in-service education and knowledge transfer to be a complex interplay of nurse personhood and external factors. Based on these findings it is suggested that when planning in-service education these key factors and the nurse personhood be included to enable success and for knowledge transfer to happen.