Effect of Nursing Skills Education on the Quality of Patient Care: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background and Today, the quality of nursing services is faced with many challenges. A review of Iranian studies showed poor quality nursing services. Nursing education increases the level of quality of care, but patients report different scores for quality of care, so, any shortages should be resolved. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of nursing education on quality of care using meta-analysis.
Methods & Materials: The search was performed in Pubmed, Scopus, Cochrane, Magiran, SID, and Cinahl databases and Google scholar search engine using MeSH and non-MeSH keywords. Studies performed in Iran were selected. The heterogeneity index of the studies was determined using Q and I-Squred tests and applying the inverse of the variance of the random effects model to estimate the overall mean difference standard for quality of care, communication, physical, and psychosocial dimensions. Stata ver. 11 was used for data analysis.
In this systematic review and meta-analysis, four articles were found to be eligible. The samples in intervention and control groups included 256 individuals (n=128 per group). The mean score for quality of nursing care was 3.16 (95% CI).
This meta-analysis showed that nursing skills training increased the score for nursing care quality in intervention groups.