JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The growing demand for end-of-life home care has led to an increased need for skilled home care nurses. However, nursing educators responsible for on-the-job training face significant barriers, such as time and geographical constraints, which limit their access to professional development. Collaborative online training programs offer a potential solution to overcome these challenges.

Objective:

To develop and evaluate a collaborative online training program designed to improve the educational ability of home care nursing educators in delivering effective on-the-job training for home-based end-of-life care.

Methods:

A randomized controlled trial protocol was adopted as the study design: a parallel group, waitlist-controlled trial with participant blinding. The eligibility criteria for participants are home care nurses working as managers or educators at an agency with at least one home death client in the past year. We will provide this program on the Internet. The intervention will comprise three online sessions, each lasting 60 minutes and held monthly, involving one lecture and two interactive case studies focused on on-the-job training in end-of-life home care. This will be followed by eight weeks of weekly educational messages via LINE. The control group will serve as a waitlist and upon completion of the intervention period, the intervention group will receive the same intervention. Primary outcomes are participants’ attitudes, measured using the End-of-Life Nursing Education Questionnaire; secondary outcomes are participants’ knowledge and educational practices in end-of-life home care. Using stratified permuted block randomization via a centralized computer-generated randomization system, 125 home care nursing managers and educators will be recruited and randomly assigned to either the intervention or control group at a ratio of 1:1. Stratification will be based on the number of home deaths managed by their agency. This will be a single-blind trial; only participants will be blinded to their group assignment. To minimize performance bias, the intervention content has been standardized prior to the intervention to ensure fidelity.

Results:

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo (No. 2024359NI-(2)) in 2024. The research is scheduled to run from November 2024 to January 2026, with plans to complete the participant recruitment and data collection within this period.

Conclusions:

This protocol can address existing challenges among training home care nursing educators, particularly regarding geographical and time constraints, by providing flexible, online educational resources. The anticipated outcomes include enhanced on-the-job training ability among nursing educators for home-based end-of-life care. The current study’s findings could support broader implementation of scalable training strategies in home care settings. Clinical Trial: The University Hospital Medical Information Network (UMIN000056165). https://center6.umin.ac.jp/cgi-open-bin/ctr/ctr_view.cgi?recptno=R000063254