Patients with mental illness are stigmatized. Health care professionals may even perpetuate\nstigma towards mental illness. Thus it is important to ensure that health care professionals have\npositive attitudes towards patients with mental illness. The aim of this study was to estimate the\nimpact of an eLearning course on psychiatric nurses� attitudes towards mental illness. A cluster-\nrandomized trial (ISRCTN32869544) design was used. Twelve wards were randomly assigned\nto the eLearning course (ePsychNurse.Net) group or the education as a usual group. The participants\n(N = 228) were allocated to the intervention (n = 115) or control group (n = 113) according\ntheir baseline ward affiliation. Attitudes were rated according to the Community Attitude towards\nthe Mentally Ill scale. Both groups were found to have positive, not stigmatized attitudes towards\nmental illness. No statistically significant changes were found at three-month or nine-month follow-\nup. It may be that by developing the ePsychNurse.Net course to include more material related\nto nurses� attitudes and as nurses become more familiar with eLearning, the course may be effective\nin shaping nurses� attitudes towards mental illness. On the other hand, our study�s ninemonth\ntime span may have been too short to change nurses� attitudes.
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