The Effect of an Educational Intervention on Nurses’ Knowledge, Perception, and Use of Nursing Presence in the Perioperative Setting

Explore the effect of a nursing presence educational intervention on nurse circulators’ perceptions, knowledge, and use of nursing presence with patients undergoing surgical procedures. One group, pretest-posttest design. Nursing presence is an intentional-reflective way of being with patients that was operationalized using four domains (Attention-to-Environment, Interaction Quality, Focus-of-Energy, and Active Engagement). Data collection involved observations of participants in practice and completion of surveys to examine 34 randomly selected nurse circulators’ knowledge, perception, and use of nursing presence before and after participating in a nursing presence educational intervention. Dependent t tests and McNemar tests were used to examine relationships between the independent and three dependent variables – knowledge, perceptions, and use of nursing presence. The educational intervention significantly enhanced participants’ nursing presence knowledge, but not perceptions, which were very high at baseline. Participants’ significantly increased their use of 3 of 4 nursing presence domains with the exception of the Attention-to-Environment domain, which is related to promoting a healing environment. Lack of attention to promoting a healing environment by the surgical team created a barrier to circulators’ ability to successfully use all four nursing presence domains. Embracing nursing presence as a practice framework involves cooperation from the surgical team and a shift in perioperative environment from a chaotic to healing one.