Evaluating the impact of a national geriatric mental health ECHO educational program on healthcare providers’ practice

ABSTRACT

Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) enables healthcare providers to share knowledge and best practices via telementoring. The ECHO model builds provider capacity and improves care for patients with a variety of health conditions. This study describes a Canada-wide National ECHO pilot project in the area of geriatric mental health and reports on the program’s impact on providers’ care practices. A mixed-methods approach was used to analyze surveys completed by participating healthcare providers. Program evaluation measured satisfaction, achievement of learning objectives, awareness of issues related to geriatric mental health, and comfort and self-efficacy working with older adults. The program led to a statistically significant increase in participants’ awareness of issues related to support for older adults with mental illness and comfort and self-efficacy in managing these patients in their own practice. The National ECHO pilot project was successful in building healthcare providers’ capacity to care for older adults with mental health issues and positively impacting their practice. These findings support using the ECHO model to provide ongoing geriatric mental health education for clinicians from across Canada and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Project ECHO
• older adults
• geriatrics
• mental health
• health care education

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Jasmeen Guraya and Navena Lingum for their support with program implementation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

LGS, CC, and DKC conceptualized this project. The program was implemented by LGS, CC, SF, DS, VE, CG, IM and DKC. Data collection and analysis were completed by MSA, LGS, DJS and ATS, and this article was written by MSA, LGS and DJS. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript prior to submission.

Data availability statement

Anonymized data is available from the corresponding author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the RBC Foundation.