Evaluations of Educational Interventions: Getting Them Published and Increasing Their Impact

Choosing Educational Resources to Build Interprofessional, Palliative Care Competency: A Replicable Review Methodology

AIM/OBJECTIVE

The purpose of the project was to provide information to inform the choice of educational resources available in British Columbia to support palliative care competency development for 4 disciplines: nurses, physicians, health care assistants, and social workers/counsellors. This article will describe the process of resource review. Results of the review are available at https://www.bc-cpc.ca/cpc/education-resource-review/. The objectives were to (1) identify gaps common to all educational resources, (2) provide information on content addressing competencies as well as logistics such as time required, cost, delivery method, and training requirements for instructors, and (3) develop a reproducible process for assessment of educational resources which is unbiased, transparent, and competency based.

METHOD

Sixteen educational resources were assessed for the percentage of competencies that were addressed. Gaps common to all resources were identified.

RESULTS

The review process is described and can be replicated when assessing future versions of these and other palliative continuing education courses. This is a reproducible methodology for review of competency-based educational resources which could be applied for any practice-related subject.

CONCLUSION

This review process provided information which can inform a provincial interprofessional palliative education plan. The methodology may be used by others to assess and choose between competency-based education resources with a palliative population focus and other patient population foci.

A multifaceted continuing professional development intervention to move stroke rehabilitation guidelines into professional practice: A feasibility study

INTRODUCTION

Rehabilitation post-stroke is critical for maximizing patient outcomes. This study assessed the feasibility of implementing and evaluating a continuing professional development (CPD) intervention aimed at increasing the uptake of stroke best practice guidelines among physiotherapists (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs) and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in six university-affiliated stroke rehabilitation centers in Quebec, Canada.

METHOD

Twelve stroke best practice recommendations with reflective tools were sent weekly by e-mail. Participants' eligibility criteria included: a) profession; b) practicing more than 1 year in a stroke rehabilitation program; c) fluency in French or English; and d) basic computer literacy. Feasibility (operationalized via participation, satisfaction and relevance), cognitive impact, perceived application in practice and expected patient outcomes were measured over 24 weeks using three questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive statistics.

RESULTS

The sample totaled 62 of 133 eligible (47%) clinicians. Satisfaction, relevance and cognitive impact of delivered information varied across disciplines and recommendations. Agreement with the recommendations was high across disciplines. On average, three-interdisciplinary recommendations (related to post-stoke depression, post-stoke fatigue and patients' and caregivers' learning needs) were rated as the most relevant for at least one patient. The majority of clinicians would use the recommendations for a specific patient and expected health benefits by applying those recommendations.

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrated the feasibility of assessing the impact of a CPD intervention in stroke rehabilitation uptake and informed the design of a research program aimed at increasing the use of stroke evidence-based rehabilitation interventions.