Sadaf Alipour - Department of Surgery- Arash Women’s Hospital- Tehran University of Medical Sciences- Tehran-Iran
Forouzandeh Jannat - Nursing Office- Arash Women’s Hospital- Tehran University of Medical Sciences- Tehran-Iran
Ladan Hosseini - Research Development Center- Arash Women’s Hospital- Tehran University of Medical Sciences-Tehran- Iran

Introduction Although continuing education is necessary for practicing nurses, it is very difficult to organize traditional classes because of large numbers of nurses and working shifts. Considering the increasing development of mobile electronic learning, we carried out a study to compare effects of the traditional face to face method with mobile learning delivered as text messages by cell phone. Methods Sixty female nurses working in our hospital were randomly divided in Class and Short Message Service (SMS) groups. Lessons concerning breast cancer screening were prepared as 33 messages and sent in 13 days for the SMS group, while the class group participated in a class held by a university lecturer of breast and cancer surgery. Pre - and post -tests were undertaken for both groups at the same time; a retention test also was performed one month later. For statistical analysis, paired T Test and independent sample T Test were used in SPSS software version 16; p<0.05 was considered significant. Results Mean age and mean work experience of participants in class and SMS groups was 35.8±7.2, 9.8±6.7, 35.4 ±7.3, and 11.5±8.5, respectively. There was a significant increase in mean score of post-tests (compared with pre-tests) in both groups (p<0.05). Although a better improvement in scores of retention tests was demonstrated in the SMS group, the mean subtraction value of the post - and pretests as well as retention- and pre-tests showed no significant difference between the 2 groups (p= 0.3 and p = 0.2, respectively). Conclusions Our study shows that teaching via SMS may probably replace traditional face to face teaching for continuing education in working nurses. Larger studies are suggested to confirm the results.

breast cancer screening, continuing education, e-learning, short message service, nurse education