Evaluating the Impact of Continuing Medical Education in the Interdisciplinary Team: A Novel, Targeted Approach

ABSTRACT

In order to maximise the learning potential of medical education programmes aimed at interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams, it is important to understand how the effectiveness of these programmes can vary between healthcare professionals from different specialities. Measuring the impact of educational activities between specialities may facilitate the development of future interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary education programmes, yielding enhanced learner outcomes and, ultimately, improving outcomes for patients. In this analysis, we report on a new approach to measuring change in knowledge and competence among learners from different physician specialities. We did this by tailoring post-activity competency assessments to three specialities – primary care physicians, pulmonologists and immunologists caring for patients with severe asthma. Our findings revealed that primary care physicians had markedly improved knowledge, measured using assessment questions, compared with the other specialities after completing the activity. We also report on differences between these specialities in intention to change clinical practice, confidence in clinical practice, and remaining educational gaps. Understanding how different members of the interdisciplinary team have benefited from an educational activity is essential for designing future educational activities and targeting resources.

KEYWORDS:

• CME
• multidisciplinary
• interdisciplinary team
• online education
• educational outcomes
• assessment

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Professor Ioana Agache, Professor Alberto Papi and Ms JoJo O’Neal for their contributions to the educational content of the touchMDT activity; Sola Neunie, ISMPP CMPP™ for her medical direction of the educational activity and helpful review of the manuscript; the touchIME (touch Independent Medical Education) audience outreach team (Joel Turner, Will Tabraham and Hannah Morton-Fishwick) for collection and analysis of the Level 1 data; Alex Noble from touchIME for statistical analyses; and Joanna MacDiarmid for copy editing.

Disclosure statement

BY reports advisory board or panel fees from Novartis, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK and TEVA; consultancy fees from AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim; and grant/research support from GSK. BJ, KL, AN, HS and AS are employees of touch Independent Medical Education Ltd.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.