Date of Conferral

2-9-2026

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Patricia Schweickert

Abstract

Inaccurate and inconsistent administration and interpretation of standardized depression screening instruments can destabilize clinical accuracy and patient safety. Despite routine administration of the ZSDS during nursing intake, informal observation and documentation review indicated a gap in nurses' understanding of how to compute raw scores, convert them to index scores, and define the severity levels. The aim of the project was to determine whether a structured staff education intervention would enhance nurses' knowledge of ZSDS administration, scoring, and interpretation. Informed by the Johns Hopkins Evidence-Based Practice model, an educational intervention based on existing evidence on the accuracy and implementation fidelity of depression screening was developed. One-group pretest-posttest design was used. A single, face-to-face education session was conducted voluntarily and included eight registered nurses. Findings revealed a significant increase in knowledge following education. The mean test scores went from 4.38/8 (54.7%) on the pretest to 8/8 (100%) on the post-test, representing an absolute improvement of 45.3%. There was no pre-intervention variability in the scores, indicating that ZSDS knowledge was fully standardized across participants. Although the sample size was small, and there is no long-term follow-up, the evidence indicates that structured staff education is an effective intervention in promoting consistency in depression screening. The project shows that focused education can minimize the risk of interpretation errors, improve clinical judgment, and help to make depression measurement in psychiatric nursing practice healthier and more accurate.

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