Advancing Teamwork in Health Care Through Continuing Education Joint Accreditation.

ABSTRACT: Teamwork is a necessity for effective care of patients in the current health care environment. Continuing education providers are best positioned to teach health care professionals about teamwork. However, health care professionals and continuing education providers largely operate in single-profession-based environments and thus need to change their programs and activities to achieve team improvement education goals. Joint Accreditation (JA) for Interprofessional Continuing Education is designed to advance teamwork to improve quality care through education programs. However, achieving JA requires significant changes to an education program that are multifaceted and complex to implement. Although challenging, implementation of JA is an effective way to advance interprofessional continuing education. Here, we discuss numerous practical strategies that can aid education programs to prepare for and achieve JA, such as attaining organizational alignment and provider adaptation to expand curriculums, reinventing the education planning process, and implementing tools to help manage the joint accredited program.

Advancing Research in Health Professions Education Through an Innovative Accelerator Panel.

INTRODUCTION: Research and scholarship are critical to advance the effective design, implementation, and evaluation of health professions education activities as well as to study outcomes and disseminate observations to the community. Yet, many educators are neither involved in nor equipped to conduct quality education research. This gap underscores the continuing education need to guide and train health professions educators to rigorously investigate, prepare, and report their educational research. METHODS: A novel session called the Education Research Accelerator was designed to increase knowledge about education research methods and resources and to improve participants' competence and performance in implementing studies. A panel helped prospective researchers develop ideas or advance projects toward completion by offering real-time feedback to pitched ideas; a live audience of learners participated virtually, expanding the impact of the session, facilitating connections, and potentially inspiring other research ideas. The outcomes of the Education Research Accelerator were evaluated immediately after the session and 18 months later. RESULTS: The Education Research Accelerator conferred favorable outcomes for participants' competence in designing education research studies and awareness of using available resources. Long-term follow-up confirmed actual benefits to use effective methodology to advance education research projects and to use resources and connections established in the Education Research Accelerator. CONCLUSIONS: Although further study is needed, the Education Research Accelerator model is a novel intervention to enhance learning, forge needed connections, and increase the sophistication of conducting education research. We propose that the model can be replicated and applied in other settings.

Observations from Transforming a Continuing Education programme in the COVID-19 Era and Preparing for the Future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted and transformed continuing education in the health professions to be reliant on digital learning modalities. This retrospective observational study of a large, international health system's continuing education programme compares educational activities offered, participation, and learning outcomes pre- and intra-pandemic to assess the impact of digitisation advanced because of the pandemic. There was a significant increase in internet-based activities that filled the gap of cancelled or postponed live, in-person activities to keep healthcare professionals up to date in their specialities and prepared to handle the clinical and hospital demands of the pandemic. Compared to live, in-person education, virtual activities were offered in shorter increments, reached a much larger amount of participants, and were equally effective in achieving learning outcomes. Questions remain regarding business model implications to generate adequate revenues to cover costs of virtual education. Additionally, there is a general inadequacy of digital learning environments to coalesce groups and meet social needs. Regardless, the efficiencies and effectiveness of digital modalities will be a primary method of teaching healthcare professionals going forward.

Manuscript review continuing medical education: a retrospective investigation of the learning outcomes from this peer reviewer benefit.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates the learning outcomes for peer reviewers participating in a manuscript review continuing medical education (CME) process. CME from serving as a peer reviewer is one of the many benefits of serving as a reviewer. DESIGN: This is a descriptive study retrospectively analysing learning outcomes self-reported by peer reviewers from 2013 to 2017 using a CME assessment framework. SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Participant data are from 1985 peer reviewers who completed 2413 manuscript reviews over 32 medical journals from 2013 to 2017 and completed the CME process after their prepublication manuscript review. 417 reviewer responses were practice behaviour change(s) that were studied in depth using an assessment framework on changes in knowledge, competence and performance. RESULTS: The results show positive learning outcomes reported by reviewers at the knowledge, competence and performance behaviour levels as a result of reviewing manuscripts. Higher levels of learning outcomes are more frequently achieved when reviewers consult multiple sources when conducting reviews. Reviewer demographics, such as gender or years of experience, did not have a significant association to learning outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Manuscript Review CME is an effective way that learning within the peer reviewer process can occur and helps reviewers gain knowledge, improve competence and make changes to their professional practice at all stages of their careers. Journal publishers should emphasise and support reviewers through offering CME to reviewers and encourage consultation of multiple sources when conducting reviews, which is an added benefit and resource to help professionals continue their development.

The impact of a quality improvement continuing medical education intervention on physicians' vaccination practice: a controlled study.

This study investigated the impact of a longitudinal quality improvement continuing medical education (CME) intervention on influenza and pneumococcal vaccination rates for patient populations at high-risk or aged ≥ 65. An observational cohort design with a propensity score to adjust for vaccine eligibility between the intervention and control cohorts was utilized to assess the impact of the intervention among primary care physicians. The intervention was a three-stage quality improvement initiative with CME learning activities. Stage A was an assessment of practice to establish baseline performance. Stage B was participation in learning interventions and individualized action planning for practice change, and Stage C was practice reassessment. Data were also collected for a control group of clinicians who did not participate during the same period. One hundred primary care physicians completed all 3 intervention stages10/14 - 7/15. Altogether, 361,528 patient records of vaccine receipt were compared for those physicians who completed the educational intervention and those who did not. The percentage of physicians' adult patients receiving influenza or pneumococcal vaccination increased on all measures. The difference between intervention versus control groups was 3.4% higher for influenza ≥ 65 years, 2.1% for influenza high-risk, 0.6% for pneumococcal ≥ 65 years, and 1.4% for pneumococcal high-risk. These results show that physician participation in a quality improvement CME initiative can be an effective strategy to improve vaccination administration. The findings strengthen the evidence that CME learning interventions can advance quality improvement goals and more favorably affect physicians' practice when educational strategies are utilized.

The effect of industry support on participants' perceptions of bias in continuing medical education.

PURPOSE: To obtain prospective evidence of whether industry support of continuing medical education (CME) affects perceptions of commercial bias in CME activities. METHOD: The authors analyzed information from the CME activity database (346 CME activities of numerous types; 95,429 participants in 2007) of a large, multispecialty academic medical center to determine whether a relationship existed among the degree of perceived bias, the type of CME activity, and the presence or absence of commercial support. RESULTS: Participants per activity ranged from 1 to 3,080 (median: 276). When asked the yes/no question, "Overall, was this activity satisfactorily free from commercial bias?" 97.3% to 99.2% (mean: 98.4%) of participants answered "yes." In responding on a four-point scale to the request, "Please rate the degree to which this activity met the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education requirement that CME activities must be free of commercial bias for or against a specific product," 95.8% to 99.3% (mean: 97.2%) of participants answered "excellent" or "good." When analyzed by type of funding relative to commercial support--none (149), single source (79), or multiple source (118)--activities were deemed to be free of commercial bias by 98% (95% CI: 97.3, 98.8), 98.5% (97.5, 99.5), and 98.3% (97.4, 99.1) of participants, respectively. None of the comparisons showed statistically significant differences. CONCLUSIONS: This large, prospective analysis found no evidence that commercial support results in perceived bias in CME activities. Bias level seem quite low for all types of CME activities and is not significantly higher when commercial support is present.