Content, implementation strategies and knowledge assessment tool on venous leg ulcers: An e-Delphi study

Abstract

Aim: To get consensus on the knowledge and skills that nursing students need to acquire regarding venous leg ulcer care, the strategies that can be applied during education and to design a first draft of a questionnaire to assess knowledge to be validated. Background: Venous leg ulcers’ care is included on undergraduate nursing education programmes but without specifying the content and training implementation strategies. Different tools have been validated to assess knowledge, but have been found inadequate. Design: An e-Delphi study. Methods: The participants were Chronic Wound Care expert nurses. Two questions were constructed and agreed on by the research team to define the problem. To answer the third question, a search was conducted for publications on venous leg ulcers, to help design the questionnaire. A 2-round e-Delphi study was conducted from January to March 2022. A panel of 17 experts participated in both rounds. The data were analysed using statistical and qualitative analysis. Results: Content must fulfil knowledge-skill areas: epidemiology, venous pathophysiology and aetiology, classification scales, knowing how to determine a differential diagnosis, treatment, measures for prevention and care of the venous return circuit, quality-of-life scales. As implementation strategies, proposals were made in four areas: subject profile where training is to be acquired, theoretical teaching, practical teaching in the classroom and clinical practice. The average consensus of the questionnaire proposal was high (>86 %) both in relevance and clarity in both rounds. We thereby obtained a questionnaire with 72 items. Conclusions: Seven categories and eight subcategories were created regarding knowledge/skills that nursing students should acquire. Four categories were recognised as strategies that can be implemented during education. A high level of consensus was reached on the items in the initial versions of the questionnaire.