National women’s health leaders have increasingly expressed concern regarding the adequacy of the women’s health content in adult nurse practitioner (ANP) and family nurse practitioner (FNP) programs and have also questioned the competency of recently graduated nurse practitioners in providing women’s health care. Concurrently, there has been a call to action focusing on the need for primary care to include comprehensive women’s health care services for increasing numbers of patients covered by health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. In addition, the Institute of Medicine has called for nurses, including nurse practitioners to practice to the full extent of their scope of practice. These mandates, together with the lack of literature assessing the knowledge and competence of recently graduated ANPs and FNPs in managing postmenopausal women with symptomatic vulvovaginal atrophy (VVA), underscored the need for this scholarly project. This scholarly project is significant to both education and practice. In education, it provides an example of an effective, online module to convey information to increase VVA knowledge that could be used by NP programs for their students. By extension, in practice, the module could be used by recently graduated ANPs and FNPs to increase knowledge of VVA, and thus, provide better care to patients who have symptomatic VVA. This educationaly focused project was based on Benner’s “From Novice to Expert” theoretical framework. Benner’s theory is based on the concept that knowledge is necessary as a foundation for skill progression. Steven’s ACE Star Model provided an evidence-based practice (EBP) framework that created a logical, step-by-step process for structuring this project. This scholarly project evaluated the effectiveness of a standardized educational module designed to increase the VVA knowledge of newly graduated ANPs and FNPs. Subjects were required to complete three online components including: a 10-minute pretest, a 30-minute standardized educational module, and a 10-minute posttest four weeks after viewing the educational module. A total of 120 subjects from around the country were enrolled, of which 59 met the inclusion criteria (graduated in the past 12 months) and 31 completed all three components of the project. Data analysis revealed a statistically significant increase in VVA knowledge on the posttest compared to the pretest for subjects who viewed the educational module. This indicated that the educational module was effective in increasing VVA knowledge of newly graduated ANPs and FNPs. This VVA educational module was an effective, easy to administer tool that could be used by ANPs and FNPs in practice to increase VVA knowledge and improve the quality of care provided to postmenopausal women with symptomatic VVA complaints.
