TY - JOUR
T1 - Health care providers' profiles and evaluations of a statewide online education program for dissemination of clinical evidence on HIV, hepatitis C virus, and sexually transmitted disease
T2 - Cross-sectional study
AU - Wang, Dongwen
AU - Abrams, Meredith
N1 - Funding Information:
The CEI program [33] is sponsored by the New York State Department of Health, with additional support from other federal, regional, and local resources. It started in 1993 as a traditional, in-person continuing medical professional education program focusing on HIV. The target audience of the CEI program is primary care clinicians such as physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, case managers, and social workers, who are currently providing or plan to provide care to HIV patients. The program aims to increase access and quality of HIV care, expand the base of clinicians who can effectively manage HIV patients, disseminate the latest clinical guidelines, and foster partnerships between community-based care providers and HIV specialists. Over the years, the CEI in-person program has successfully trained thousands of clinicians.
Funding Information:
This work is supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) through grant R24 HS022057 and by the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute through contracts C023557, C024882, and C029086. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsors. We would like to thank: (1) Selina Lianda for her participation in analyses of the text comments; (2) the Clinical Education Initiative staff Amneris Luque, Xuan Hung Le, Terry Doll, Matthew Bernhardt, and Monica Barbosu for their contributions to the program; and (3) AHRQ and New York State program officers Marian James, Beatrice Aladin, Cheryl Smith, Howard Lavigne, Lyn Stevens, and Bruce Agins for their support. DW was affiliated with the University of Rochester at the start of this study and continued the work after he moved to Arizona State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© Dongwen Wang, Meredith Abrams. Originally published in JMIR Medical Education (http://mededu.jmir.org), 28.03.2019. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Education, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mededu.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - Background: Timely and effective dissemination of the latest clinical evidence to health care providers is essential for translating biomedical research into routine patient care. Online platforms offer unique opportunities for dissemination of medical knowledge. Objective: In this study, we report the profiles of health care providers participating in the New York State HIV-HCV-STD Clinical Education Initiative online program and their evaluations of the online continuing professional development courses. Methods: We compiled professional and personal background information of the clinicians who completed at least one online course. We collected their self-reported program evaluation data with regard to the course content, format, knowledge increase, and impact on clinical practice. Results: We recorded a total of 4363 completions of 88 online courses by 1976 unique clinicians during a 12-month study period. The clinicians' background was diverse in terms of demographics, education levels, professional disciplines, practice years, employment settings, caseloads, and clinical services. The evaluation of online courses was very positive (usefulness/relevance, 91.08%; easy comprehension, 89.09%; knowledgeable trainer, 92.00%; appropriate format, 84.35%; knowledge increase, 48.52%; intention to use knowledge, 85.26%; and plan to change practice, 21.98%). Comparison with the reference data indicated that the online program successfully reached out to the primary care communities. Both the younger generation and the senior health care providers were attracted to the online program. High-quality multimedia resources, flexibility of access, ease of use, and provision of continuing professional development credits contributed to the initial success of this online clinical education program. Conclusions: We have successfully characterized a diverse group of clinicians participating in a statewide online continuing professional development program. The evaluation has shown effective use of online resources to disseminate clinical evidence on HIV, hepatitis C virus, and sexually transmitted disease to primary care clinicians.
AB - Background: Timely and effective dissemination of the latest clinical evidence to health care providers is essential for translating biomedical research into routine patient care. Online platforms offer unique opportunities for dissemination of medical knowledge. Objective: In this study, we report the profiles of health care providers participating in the New York State HIV-HCV-STD Clinical Education Initiative online program and their evaluations of the online continuing professional development courses. Methods: We compiled professional and personal background information of the clinicians who completed at least one online course. We collected their self-reported program evaluation data with regard to the course content, format, knowledge increase, and impact on clinical practice. Results: We recorded a total of 4363 completions of 88 online courses by 1976 unique clinicians during a 12-month study period. The clinicians' background was diverse in terms of demographics, education levels, professional disciplines, practice years, employment settings, caseloads, and clinical services. The evaluation of online courses was very positive (usefulness/relevance, 91.08%; easy comprehension, 89.09%; knowledgeable trainer, 92.00%; appropriate format, 84.35%; knowledge increase, 48.52%; intention to use knowledge, 85.26%; and plan to change practice, 21.98%). Comparison with the reference data indicated that the online program successfully reached out to the primary care communities. Both the younger generation and the senior health care providers were attracted to the online program. High-quality multimedia resources, flexibility of access, ease of use, and provision of continuing professional development credits contributed to the initial success of this online clinical education program. Conclusions: We have successfully characterized a diverse group of clinicians participating in a statewide online continuing professional development program. The evaluation has shown effective use of online resources to disseminate clinical evidence on HIV, hepatitis C virus, and sexually transmitted disease to primary care clinicians.
KW - Continuing education
KW - HIV
KW - Hepatitis C
KW - Information dissemination
KW - Multimedia
KW - Online systems
KW - Sexually transmitted diseases
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U2 - 10.2196/10722
DO - 10.2196/10722
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099062618
SN - 2369-3762
VL - 5
JO - JMIR Medical Education
JF - JMIR Medical Education
IS - 1
M1 - e10722
ER -