The effect of a structured adolescent health summer programme: A quasi-experimental intervention

Background: It is important to integrate adolescent health domains into pre-service nursing education in order to enhance undergraduate nursing students' competencies in promoting adolescent health. Aim: To determine the effectiveness of a structured adolescent health summer programme for Chinese undergraduate nursing students. Methods: A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate differences in the Chinese undergraduate nursing students' perceived competency in promoting adolescent health. A stand-alone adolescent health course was implemented as an intervention with pre- and post-tests of a 2-week intensive summer programme in 2010. The questionnaire included demographics, adolescent health competency checklist and programme evaluation. Descriptive statistics with the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test and the Mann-Whitney U-test were used for data analysis. Results: Of the 113 nursing students, seniors perceived higher adolescent health competence mean scores than the juniors in the post-test phase. Majority of nursing students revealed the increasing awareness of the importance in promoting healthy lifestyle behaviours and psychosocial well-being after attending the summer programme. They agreed that nurses do have a role to play. Limitations: This 2-week summer programme may only have short-term impacts on students' perception. Conclusions: A stand-alone adolescent health summer programme can prepare nursing students to respond to the health issues of adolescents by enhancing their competence in health need assessment and service delivery. Implications for nursing and health policy: Nurses serve in a leadership role for health policies and programmes. In nursing education, it is important for students to understand how to put in place policies to resolve adolescent health issues.