Six ways to maximize survey response rates: lessons from a medical school accreditation survey in a Canadian setting.

Background: Surveys are being increasingly used to gather feedback and study data in healthcare professions. However, it may be challenging to achieve high response rates in surveys administered to healthcare professionals. The aim of this paper is to report six strategies that contributed to a high response rate on the Independent Student Analysis at the University of Toronto (U of T), which can be applied to other surveys to achieve strong response rates amongst healthcare professionals. Methods: In 2019, as part of accreditation for the U of T MD Program, we conducted the Independent Student Analysis, a student-led survey examining a medical student's experience. We review and critically evaluate the factors that contributed to a robust response rate amongst one of the largest cohorts of medical students in Canada. Results: Among 1080 students in the MD program, we achieved an unprecedented response rate of 87.2%. Six factors were identified that most contributed to our high response rate, including: faculty support, student representation, eliciting participant feedback, creating protected time for completion, offering incentives, and generating awareness. Conclusions: Eliciting high survey response rates from medical learners can be challenging. However, with careful consideration of learner feedback and effective employment of the strategies discussed in this paper, medical school faculty may better engage students in survey completion, achieving higher response rates and gathering richer insight, which can be used to more effectively enact meaningful change amongst healthcare professionals.

Contexte: Les enquêtes auprès de professionnels de la santé sont de plus en plus utilisées pour recueillir et étudier des perspectives et des données, mais il peut s'avérer difficile d'obtenir des taux de réponse élevés. Cet article vise à présenter six stratégies qui ont permis de susciter une forte participation à l'enquête de l'Analyse indépendante des étudiants à l'Université de Toronto et qui peuvent être transposées à d'autres contextes de sondage auprès des professionnels du domaine.En 2019, dans le cadre du processus d'agrément du programme de doctorat en médecine de l'Université de Toronto, nous avons réalisé l'Analyse indépendante des étudiants, une enquête dirigée par les étudiants en médecine visant à examiner leur expérience. Nous passons en revue et évaluons de manière critique les facteurs qui ont contribué à l'atteinte d'un taux de réponse élevé auprès d'une des plus grandes cohortes d'étudiants en médecine au Canada. Résultats: Nous avons obtenu un taux de réponse sans précédent de 87,2 % parmi les 1 080 étudiants inscrits au programme de médecine. Les six facteurs qui ont le plus contribué à ce taux de réponse élevé sont : le soutien du corps professoral, la représentation des étudiants, leur participation à la conception de l'enquête, la création de plages horaires réservées pour remplir le questionnaire, l'offre d'incitatifs et la sensibilisation. Conclusions: Il peut être difficile de susciter une forte participation aux questionnaires chez les étudiants en médecine. Cependant, en considérant attentivement les commentaires des apprenants et en utilisant efficacement les stratégies présentées dans cet article, le corps professoral seront en mesure de mobiliser les étudiants à participer davantage aux enquêtes et de tirer profit de leur apport pour éclairer la promotion de changements pertinents chez les professionnels de la santé.

Examination of a Canada-Wide Collaboration Platform for Order Sets: Retrospective Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Knowledge translation and dissemination are some of the main challenges that affect evidence-based medicine. Web 2.0 platforms promote the sharing and collaborative development of content. Executable knowledge tools, such as order sets, are a knowledge translation tool whose localization is critical to its effectiveness but a challenge for organizations to develop independently. OBJECTIVE: This paper describes a Web 2.0 resource, referred to as the collaborative network (TCN), for order set development designed to share executable knowledge (order sets). This paper also analyzes the scope of its use, describes its use through network analysis, and examines the provision and use of order sets in the platform by organizational size. METHODS: Data were collected from Think Research's TxConnect platform. We measured interorganization sharing across Canadian hospitals using descriptive statistics. A weighted chi-square analysis was used to evaluate institutional size to share volumes based on institution size, with post hoc Cramer V score to measure the strength of association. RESULTS: TCN consisted of 12,495 order sets across 683 diagnoses or processes. Between January 2010 and March 2015, a total of 131 health care organizations representing 360 hospitals in Canada downloaded order sets 105,496 times. Order sets related to acute coronary syndrome, analgesia, and venous thromboembolism were most commonly shared. COVID-19 order sets were among the most actively shared, adjusting for order set lifetime. A weighted chi-square analysis showed nonrandom downloading behavior (P<.001), with medium-sized institutions downloading content from larger institutions acting as the most significant driver of this variance (chi-gram=124.70). CONCLUSIONS: In this paper, we have described and analyzed a Web 2.0 platform for the sharing of order set content with significant network activity. The robust use of TCN to access customized order sets reflects its value as a resource for health care organizations when they develop or update their own order sets.

Fostering trust, collaboration, and a culture of continuous quality improvement: A call for transparency in medical school accreditation.

Medical schools provide the foundation for a physician's growth and lifelong learning. They also require a large share of government resources. As such, they should seek opportunities to maintain trust from the public, their students, faculty, universities, regulatory colleges, and each other. The accreditation of medical schools attempts to assure stakeholders that the educational process conforms to appropriate standards and thus can be trusted. However, accreditation processes are poorly understood and the basis for accrediting authorities' decisions are often opaque. We propose that increasing transparency in accreditation could enhance trust in the institutions that produce society's physicians. While public reporting of accreditation results has been established in other jurisdictions, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, North American accrediting bodies have not yet embraced this more transparent approach. Public reporting can enhance public trust and engagement, hold medical schools accountable for continuous quality improvement, and can catalyze a culture of collaboration within the broader medical education ecosystem. Inviting patients and the public to peer into one of the most formative and fundamental parts of their physicians' professional training is a powerful tool for stakeholder and public engagement that the North American medical education community at large has yet to use.

Les facultés de médecine procurent les bases pour la croissance professionnelle et le développement professionnel continu. Elles absorbent également une grande part des ressources gouvernementales. Conséquemment, elles devraient chercher des occasions de maintenir la confiance du public, de leurs étudiants, du corps professoral, des universités, des organismes de réglementation et les unes des autres. L'accréditation des facultés de médecine vise à assurer les parties prenantes que le processus éducationnel est conforme aux normes appropriées et donc de confiance. Toutefois, les processus d'accréditation sont mal compris et les fondements des décisions d'accréditation des autorités sont souvent opaques.Nous proposons que l'accroissement de la transparence du processus d'agrément puisse rehausser la confiance dans les institutions qui forment les médecins de notre société. Bien que la diffusion publique des résultats de l'agrémentsoit établie dans d'autres juridictions, comme en Australie et au Royaume-Uni, les organismes d'agrément de l'Amérique du Nord n'ont pas encore adopté cette approche plus transparente. Les la diffusion publique peut améliorer la confiance et la participation du public, tenir les facultés responsables de l'amélioration continue de la qualité et catalyser une culture de collaboration au sein de l'écosystème élargi de la formation médicale. Inviter les patients et le public à scruter l'une des étapes les plus formative fondamentale de la formation professionnelle de leurs médecins est un puissant outil pour les parties prenantes ainsi que pour susciter la participation du public. Il reste à l'utiliser dans la communauté d'éducation médicale nord-américaine.

Evaluating the quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses published on direct oral anticoagulants in the past 5 years.

Systematic reviews (SRs) have been reported with increasing frequency as a means of collating studies which may have been performed over different period of times, in different geographical areas and by different groups of investigators. As SRs have become more common, quality metrics such as Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) have become available for these reviews. AMSTAR is an 11-point checklist that assesses the methodological and reporting quality of a SR. In clinical practice, direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) have been increasingly used for the treatment and prevention of both venous and arterial thromboembolism. We sought to evaluate the quality of SRs published on DOACs using the AMSTAR criteria. A comprehensive search of Medline, EMBASE and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from January 2013 to February 2019 was performed. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts and subsequently full texts for eligibility. Data extraction was also completed in duplicate. Categories of extracted data included AMSTAR rating, journal of publication, year of publication, number of studies included in the SR, reporting adherence to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, number of times the paper was cited and journal impact factor. A total of 3729 articles were identified, of which 250 were eligible for analysis. SR quality was highly variable with mean (SD) AMSTAR score of 5.68/11 (2.21). Reporting adherence to PRISMA guideline correlated with a moderate (5-8) or high quality (9-11) (OR=4.19, p<0.01) AMSTAR score. The methodological quality of DOACs was generally rated to be low-moderate, and improved adherence to AMSTAR methodological practices are strongly recommended.

A Systematic Review of Economic Evaluations in Vascular Surgery.

BACKGROUND: With increasing healthcare costs and the emergence of new technologies in vascular surgery, economic evaluations play a critical role in informing decision-making that optimizes patient outcomes while minimizing per capita costs. The objective of this systematic review is to describe all English published economic evaluations in vascular surgery and to identify any significant gaps in the literature. METHODS: We conducted a comprehensive English literature review of EMBASE, MEDLINE, The Cochrane Library, Ovid Health Star, and Business Source Complete from inception until December 1, 2018. Two independent reviewers screened articles for eligibility using predetermined inclusion criteria and subsequently extracted data. Articles were included if they compared 2 or more vascular surgery interventions using either a partial economic evaluation (cost analysis) or full economic evaluation (cost-utility, cost-benefit, and/or cost-effectiveness analysis). Data extracted included publishing journal, date of publication, country of origin of authors, type of economic evaluation, and domain of vascular surgery. RESULTS: A total of 234 papers were included in the analysis. The majority of the papers included only a cost analysis (183, 78%), and there were only 51 papers that conducted a full economic analysis (22%). The 51 papers conducted a total of 69 economic analyses. This consisted of 32 cost-effectiveness analyses, 29 cost-utility analyses, and 8 cost-benefit analyses. The most common domains studied were aneurysmal disease (89, 38%) and peripheral vascular disease (50, 21%). Economic evaluations were commonly published in the Journal of Vascular Surgery (83, 35%) and Annals of Vascular Surgery (32, 14%), with most study authors located in the United States (127, 54%). There was a trend of economic evaluations being published more frequently in recent years. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of vascular surgery economic evaluations used only a cost analysis, rather than a full economic evaluation, which may not be ideal in pursuing interventions that simultaneously optimize cost and patient outcomes. The literature is lacking in full economic evaluations-a trend persistent in other surgical specialties-and there is a need for full economic evaluations to be conducted in the field of vascular surgery.

Level of clinical evidence presented at the Society for Vascular Surgery Annual Meeting during a 5-year period (2012-2016).

OBJECTIVE: During the past decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on the use of high-quality evidence to inform clinical decision-making. The purpose of our study was to assess trends in the level of evidence (LOE) of abstracts presented at the Vascular Annual Meeting from 2012 to 2016. METHODS: All Vascular Annual Meeting abstracts for 2012 to 2016 were obtained through the Journal of Vascular Surgery. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts for eligibility. Research with a nonclinical focus was excluded from the study. Data extracted from eligible abstracts included study type (therapeutic, prognostic, diagnostic), study size, country of academic institution of primary author, presentation type, and whether the sample was recruited or from a database. Abstracts were assigned an LOE using the 2011 Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine classification scheme based on study design (eg, case series, randomized controlled trial). A χ2 test and analysis of variance test were conducted to assess nonrandom changes in LOE during the study period. RESULTS: Of the 1403 abstracts screened, 1147 were included. Inter-rater agreement was high (κ value for abstract screening was 0.93; κ value for data extraction was 0.89). Therapeutic studies were the most common study type (58%), followed by prognostic studies (37%), then diagnostic studies (5%). The majority of abstracts (75.0%) were submitted from North American institutions. Overall, 0.35% of the presentations were level I evidence, 3.1% level II, 52.8% level III, 38.0% level IV, and 5.7% level V. The average LOE per year fluctuated between 3.54 and 3.32, with a mean LOE of 3.45. The proportion of high-quality evidence (level I and level II) increased in the years 2015 and 2016, representing 78% of all level I and level II abstracts presented in the 5-year period. A χ2 test between LOE and year yielded a P value of .0084, indicating significant nonrandom change in LOE between 2012 and 2016. The majority of high LOE research was presented in poster sessions (37.5%), plenary sessions (27.5%), and international forum sessions/talks (25%) at the meeting. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, average LOE remained relatively consistent between 2012 and 2016, with most abstracts classified as level III or level IV. There was a gradual, albeit minor, increase in the proportion of level I and level II evidence in 2015 and 2016, potentially indicating the increasing commitment to producing and disseminating high-level research in vascular surgery. Furthermore, a lack of a classification tool specific to vascular surgery research occasionally presented a challenge in assigning LOE, perhaps indicating a need for such a tool in this specialty.