Staff Education to Increase Knowledge of Referral Completeness

This staff education project addressed a practice gap in a psychiatric facility where nonclinical staff frequently submitted incomplete referral documentation for patients with co-occurring medical and psychiatric conditions. Due to the facility’s inability to provide acute medical stabilization, medical clearance is required before nurse practitioners can determine admission appropriateness. The project question was, Does educating intake staff on a standardized referral checklist improve knowledge of referral criteria, as measured by pre- and post-education surveys? The Johns Hopkins evidence-based practice (JHEBP) model informed evidence translation, and the analysis, design/development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) instructional design model underpinned the development and evaluation of the intervention. The literature for the educational project was obtained by searching CINAHL Complete, EBSCO, and ProQuest databases, which resulted in 500 articles; a total of 14 peer-reviewed articles published within the past 5 years were analyzed. Ten admissions staff participated and completed both the pre- and post-surveys via SurveyMonkey. Education was delivered through a 30-min recorded Microsoft Teams session for the day shift and made available to all admissions staff for review. The 78% to 93% change from pretest to the posttest survey represented a 19 percentage point gain in knowledge score that was significant, t(9) = −5.21, p < .001. This project supports nursing practice by providing evidence of effective staff education that, if implemented, may improve intake consistency, strengthen interprofessional communication, and promote safer psychiatric admissions.