Learners' decisions for attending Pediatric Grand Rounds: a qualitative and quantitative study.

BACKGROUND: Although grand rounds plays a major educational role at academic medical centers, there has been little investigation into the factors influencing the learners' decision to attend. Greater awareness of attendees' expectations may allow grand rounds planners to better accommodate the learners' perspective, potentially making continuing education activities more attractive and inviting. METHODS: We used both qualitative (part A) and quantitative (part B) techniques to investigate the motivators and barriers to grand rounds attendance. Part A investigated contextual factors influencing attendance as expressed through attendee interviews. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using grounded theory techniques. We created a concept map linking key factors and their relationships. In part B we quantified the motivators and barriers identified during the initial interviews through a survey of the grand rounds audience. RESULTS: Sixteen persons voluntarily took part in the qualitative study (part A) by participating in one of seven group interview sessions. Of the 14 themes that emerged from these sessions, the most frequent factors motivating attendance involved competent practice and the need to know. All sessions discussed intellectual stimulation, social interaction, time constraints and convenience, licensure, content and format, and absence of cost for attending sessions. The 59 respondents to the survey (part B) identified clinically-useful topics (85%), continuing education credit (46%), cutting-edge research (27%), networking (22%), and refreshments (8%) as motivators and non-relevant topics (44%) and too busy to attend (56%) as barriers. CONCLUSION: Greater understanding of the consumers' perspective can allow planners to tailor the style, content, and logistics to make grand rounds more attractive and inviting.

Unanticipated learning outcomes associated with commitment to change in continuing medical education.

INTRODUCTION: Educator-derived, predetermined instructional objectives are integral to the traditional instructional model and form the linkage between instructional design and postinstruction evaluation. The traditional model does not consider unanticipated learning outcomes. We explored the contribution of learner-identified desired outcomes compared with learner outcomes that were not named in the instructional design. METHOD: This study was conducted at a short course in pediatrics in which 43 physicians, advanced practice nurses, nurses, and physician assistants voluntarily self-identified committed- to changes (CTCs). We compared these CTC predicates with the predetermined instructional objectives that had been published in advance in the conference brochure and syllabus. CTCs whose predicates described the same features as the instructional objectives were considered to be anticipated learning outcomes. CTCs lacking correspondence with instructional objectives were considered to represent unanticipated learning outcomes. RESULTS: Of the 157 CTCs, 68% were anticipated learning outcomes because their predicates could be linked to the instructional objectives. The remaining 32% of CTCs did not correspond to any of the instructional objectives and thus represented unanticipated learning outcomes. DISCUSSION: These findings demonstrate that evaluations based on instructional objectives, although valuable, are incomplete because educational activities may also stimulate many unanticipated learning outcomes. Continuing medical education planners can gain a fuller assessment of the effect of their educational endeavors by including predetermined instructional objectives and encouraging the constructivist practice of recognizing unanticipated learning.