Effects of e-learning in a continuing education context on nursing care: a review of systematic qualitative, quantitative and mixed studies reviews (protocol).

INTRODUCTION: Continuing education (CE) is imperative to the future of professional nursing. The use of e-learning by registered nurses for CE is spreading. A review of systematic reviews will be conducted to develop a broad picture of the effects of e-learning in a CE context on nursing care.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Systematic qualitative, quantitative and mixed studies reviews published in English, French or Spanish from 1 January 2006 will be included. The outcomes of interest will be extracted and analysed inductively and deductively from the Nursing Care Performance Framework; some themes include nursing resources, nurses' practice environment, processes, professional satisfaction, and nursing sensitive outcomes. Three reviewers will independently screen first the title and abstract of the papers, and then the full texts in order to assess eligibility. Two teams of two reviewers will extract the selected reviews' characteristics and data. The results from various types of reviews will be integrated using a data-based convergent synthesis design. We will conduct a thematic synthesis and transform all quantitative and mixed data into qualitative data.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval is not required for review of systematic reviews. We will summarise evidence concerning the negative, neutral and positive effects of various forms of e-learning on different aspects of nursing care. If we find gaps in the literature, we will highlight them and suggest ideas for further research. We will also focus on positive effects and present, if possible, the components and characteristics of e-learning interventions that were found to be successful. We will present this protocol and results in international conferences in nursing, medical, and health informatics domains. We will also submit the results of our work for peer-review publication in a journal indexed in the international bibliographic database of biomedical information.