October 18, 2013 | Lucid, Strategic planning, medical education
How to advance outcomes for patients using a medical education process, by Jan Steele PhD, operations director, Lucid
There is a growing body of evidence (eg Bauchner et al, 2001) that standard Continuing Medical Education (CME) activities, where healthcare professionals attend a one-day meeting or similar, do not result in a change in clinical behaviour. This is hardly surprising! Psychologists who study how people change their behaviour describe change as a journey. The change journey has three distinct phases:
Putting theory into practice
Imagine there is new evidence which suggests that accurately determining disease severity at diagnosis in patients with psoriasis improves patient outcomes, as the most effective therapies can be used from the outset. You might plan a meeting designed to support clinical leads in making this change in their department.
Predisposing delegates prior to education
Your aim here is to highlight to the participant the need for a change in clinical practice which will advance patient outcomes. There are several ways to identify a gap between what should be happening and what is actually happening. In the example above, we could ask participating clinicians to:
None of the above is perfect, and the list is not exhaustive, but raising a participant’s consciousness about the need to change before he comes to an educational event makes him more receptive to the education delivered.
Enabling delegates during the education
Plenary talks do not change behaviour, and so the first rule in changing participant behaviour is to make the education interactive. This can include:
It is also critical that you enable your participants to discuss the benefits of making the change and the barriers they perceive (preferably with someone who has already changed their practice). Finally, think about tools and tips that participants can take away to help them change when they return to their clinic.
Reinforcing the change in behaviour
This is regularly overlooked. The participant returns to his clinic and slips back into his old habits. There are various ways of reinforcing behaviour change such as:
While there is a growing body of evidence that the way we educate needs to change, we still deliver one-day, plenary-heavy meetings. As an industry, if we want to support education that advances outcomes for patients we need to look at education more holistically, and support participants for the entire journey.
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