Prioritising Content for Continuing Education in Non-Invasive Ventilation Care: A Needs Assessment Survey of Intensive Care Unit Nurses

Background: The success of non-invasive ventilation (NIV) depends on bedside nursing judgement, yet nurses report insufficient preparation, and educational content is usually decided before the competencies nurses most need are identified. Objectives: To prioritise NIV competencies, derived for this study from three clinical practice guidelines, by educational need, and, as secondary aims, describe intensive care unit nurses’ perceived knowledge, self-efficacy and implementation climate for evidence-based practice and their correlates. Methods: A cross-sectional survey questionnaire was completed by 142 nurses in four intensive care units of a tertiary teaching hospital in the Republic of Korea in June and July 2026 (response rate 97.3%). Each of 35 competencies was rated for importance and present competency; priorities were derived by combining the Borich needs assessment with the Locus for Focus model, and their stability was examined by bootstrap resampling. Results: Item means were 5.47 (SD 2.05) for perceived knowledge and 5.53 (SD 2.20) for self-efficacy on a 10-point scale and 1.81 (SD 0.78) for implementation climate on a 4-point scale. Perceived knowledge and self-efficacy were higher among nurses with experience of NIV care and previous NIV education, and these associations remained after adjustment. Length of intensive care experience was not independently associated with either variable, and neither was correlated with implementation climate. Importance exceeded present competency for all 35 items. Seven items were identified as priority candidates; ventilator waveform monitoring was the only item selected by both methods, but its classification was not stable across resamples. Conclusions: The self-perceived priorities concentrated on monitoring and recognising treatment failure, competencies that require interpretation of changing physiological data. Needs assessment before programme design can inform the selection of content, provided that its self-report basis and the instability of items near classification thresholds are recognised.