Breast cancer screening education: comparing outcome skills of nurse practitioner students and medical residents.

BACKGROUND

Nurse practitioner students, along with all primary care trainees, need breast cancer screening education. The purpose of the study was to compare the performances of nurse practitioner students and medical residents before and after receiving training.

METHODS AND

RESULTS

In a pretest/posttest design, 51 nurse practitioner students and 47 medical residents received training either from a standardized patient or from a lecture/demonstration class. Before training and 1 year after, participants took the written test and had their skills evaluated by a standardized patient. There were no significant differences between the nurse practitioner students and the medical residents in the mean scores on the written pretest or on the written posttest with both groups improving their scores. The nurse practitioner students had significantly higher scores on the practicum posttest (P <.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Nurse practitioner students perform well in learning breast cancer screening. More than one method of teaching is effective.