The Johns Hopkins Pulmonary CME (Continuing Medical Education) Project

摘要

This program functioned to evaluate efforts for Continuing Medical Education in COPD directed from a major university to physicians in rural based practice settings. Two audio visual programs addressing diagnosis, treatment and patient compliance were developed by integrating a Health Education planning model and Health Accounting techniques with perceived needs and baseline self assessment by physician participants. A quasi-experimental design was used to assign subjects into either a control group or experimental sub-groups, defined by varying combinations of participation in content identification and performance feedback. Evaluation included physician self-reports of knowledge and practice variables at each program point and Patient Simulation for clinical practice. This latter measure of program impact was selected when the data base for outcome measure was lost because of the 1976 coal miner strike. Study results indicated significant knowledge gain (p=<0.001) at the time of program distribution and retention at 9 month follow up. The patient simulations produced significant differences between experimental and control physicians in efforts for patient education (p=<0.01), including efforts for smoking cessation. Clinical performance for diagnosis and treatment did not differ for the two groups (p = .66). Sixty-five physicians remained through the three self-assessments, and, of these, 45 participated in the patient simulation.