Purpose: To examine the effects of psychiatric nursing e-course taught by distance learning on students' beliefs about mental illnesses.
Design and methods: This study was conducted as a pretest, posttest, and follow-up quasi-experimental study with 147 nursing students.
Findings: The results showed that the psychiatric nursing e-course significantly reduced the stigmatization total and dimension scale scores of the participants, and the effect continued in the follow-up measurement. The difference between the pretest and posttest stigmatization scores of the students who concentrated during virtual classes and those who found student-instructor interaction and virtual course materials sufficient was statistically significant.
Practice implications: Our results have shown that the psychiatric nursing e-course is effective on beliefs regarding stigmatization, and distance education is promising for nursing education to continue effectively.
Keywords: distance education; psychiatric nursing; stigmatization; student nurse; virtual lesson.
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