Utilization Conditions of Virtual Education at Continuing Education for Nurses: A review

Abstract

Along with advances in technology and education, applying a new method is felt to provide effective instruction. To keep pace with the growing knowledge, the service training is an integral component of education especially in the field of medical education. Because the limitations of many disciplines to attend training classes, Conventional methods will not be able to meet these educational needs. So, virtual education can be an efficient supplement for training in this area. The present study is a systematic review of relevant studies of virtual education in-service training of nurses. With the systematic review method the Persian and Latin databases: Iran medex, Iran doc, SID, CINHAL, Cochran, PubMed, Science Direct, Eric were searched by keywords: nursing, e-learning, continuous education, and virtual education that 1330 articles were found. In line with to the entry criteria, 13 articles were selected to answer the research questions. The results indicate that the use of virtual education requires an appropriate model, the specific requirements and facilities and planning implementation in process. Virtual education is an effective way to increase knowledge and practice and can be a good complement to conventional in-service education for nurses. Although it may not have significant advantages in learning and performance improvement compared to convention educational methods, but its effectiveness can be increased significantly with proper and comprehensive planning.