Preliminary testing of an asthma distance education program (ADEP) for school nurses in Appalachia.

Asthma remains one of the most challenging chronic illnesses faced by school nurses both nationally and in the State of West Virginia. There is a clear need to provide ongoing continuing asthma education to school nurses. However, nurses face many barriers to receiving this education. The purpose of this pilot project was to develop and evaluate distance learning technology as a method to deliver continuing asthma education to school nurses in West Virginia. A sample of 20 school nurses from 2 counties in West Virginia participated in the study using the Wimba live classroom distance learning program. Significant modest improvements were found in both the intervention groups compared to a control group postintervention. The results of this pilot study are promising and show that distance learning technology could be a viable solution for school nurses to receive asthma continuing education.