Introduction: Education is important for improvement of knowledge of health care professionals. Web-based education could be considered because of the flexibility of the education system, providing a good opportunity to extend, and deepen learning of health care providers. This study aimed to assess the impact of virtual learning on knowledge of nurses working at the NICU.

Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 80 nurses working in the neonatal intensive care of a Tehran University of Medical Sciences hospital, using random sampling method (lottery), were divided to two experimental and control groups. Through the virtual symbol system (through Learning Management System (LMS)) of the virtual school of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, the experimental group received two months of training. The training had an asynchronous on–line learning method using educational content in the form of visual (multimedia files), audio (podcasting) and text files (PDF). The study was conducted within 2 months during years 2015 to 2016. Data was collected by a demographic questionnaire and the Caring Ability Scale (CAI) on the first day and two months after the intervention was used to assess nurses.

Results: Subjects in the intervention and control groups were matched in terms of demographic variables. The results of the independent and paired samples t-test showed that there were no significant differences between the unmeant score of care ability in the two groups before the intervention (P = 0.001), and between the mean caring ability before and after the study (P = 0.071). However, there were significant differences between the mean caring ability of the intervention group before and after the intervention (P < 0.001) and between the mean caring ability of the two groups, after the intervention (P < 0.001).

Conclusions: E-learning can be used in a flexible manner, which allows access to multimedia and interactive educational content at any time and place to train nurses.