The purposes of this study were to develop a PBL program for continuing nurse education and to evaluate the program after its implementation.

The PBL program was developed in the core cardio-pulmonary nursing concepts through a collaborative approach with a nursing school and a hospital. The PBL packages with simulation on ACLS were implemented to 40 clinical nurses. The entire PBL program consisted of six 3-hour weekly classes and was evaluated by the participants' subjective responses.

Two PBL packages in cardio-pulmonary system including clinical cases and tutorial guidelines were developed. The 57.5% of the participants responded positively about the use of PBL as continuing nurse education in terms of self-motivated and cooperative learning, whereas 20.0% of the participants answered that the PBL method was not suitable for clinical nurses. Some modifications were suggested in grouping participants and program contents for PBL.

The PBL method could be utilized to promote nurses' clinical competencies as well as self-learning abilities. Further research is needed in the implementation strategies of PBL-based continuing education in order to improve its effectiveness.

This study was done to develop a measurement tool for evaluation of continuing nursing education programs and to verify its validity for effective management and quality of education programs.

The draft of the evaluation measurement was developed from consultation with professionals, focus group interviews targeting groups of nurses, and individual interviews with education program planners. After 6 professionals examined content validity, 46 items were retained. A pilot-survey was conducted to confirm the time required to complete the questionnaire and the level of understanding of general content and each item in the questionnaire. Construct validity was verified through exploratory factor analysis of data from a survey with 44 items completed by 452 nurses and 59 education program planners.

The final evaluation measurement for continuing nursing education programs consisted of 6 evaluation factors and 36 evaluation items. The 6 evaluation factors included identifying program goals and target groups, program planning, performance, operation and management, program outcomes, and program effectiveness.

The evaluation measurement for continuing nursing education programs developed in this study is considered suitable to utilize as an evaluation measurement of the quality of continuing education programs for nurses.