Redesigning Continuing Education in the Health Professions


Book Description

Today in the United States, the professional health workforce is not consistently prepared to provide high quality health care and assure patient safety, even as the nation spends more per capita on health care than any other country. The absence of a comprehensive and well-integrated system of continuing education (CE) in the health professions is an important contributing factor to knowledge and performance deficiencies at the individual and system levels. To be most effective, health professionals at every stage of their careers must continue learning about advances in research and treatment in their fields (and related fields) in order to obtain and maintain up-to-date knowledge and skills in caring for their patients. Many health professionals regularly undertake a variety of efforts to stay up to date, but on a larger scale, the nation's approach to CE for health professionals fails to support the professions in their efforts to achieve and maintain proficiency. Redesigning Continuing Education in the Health Professions illustrates a vision for a better system through a comprehensive approach of continuing professional development, and posits a framework upon which to develop a new, more effective system. The book also offers principles to guide the creation of a national continuing education institute.




Evaluation for Continuing Education


Book Description

Evaluation for Continuing Education provides the useful and practical tools necessary to ensure a successful program evaluation. The book presents systematic guidelines aimed at enhancing understanding of evaluation concepts and procedures, and offers manageable ways to selectively include evaluation activities as an integral part of program planning, implementation, and justification. Author Alan Knox reveals that the key to successful evaluations that improve education programs for adults is a basic rationale for why and how. He helps readers select and develop their own rationale throughout the course of the book while suggesting fundamental evaluation concepts and procedures. He shows how to distinguish some program aspect upon which a specific evaluation project will focus-including needs assessment, goals and policies, staffing assessment, materials development, and more-and summarizes examples of evaluation reports that reflect the various types of providers and scales on which evaluations are conducted. Knox offers a particularly wide variety of these examples, enabling readers to reflect on implications for their own evaluations and fashion unique guidelines and procedures that fit their own situations.




Assessing Needs in Continuing Education


Book Description

In order to develop effective education programs for adult learners, it is necessary first to determine what the needs of those learners are. In this book, Donna S. Queeney offers step-by-step guidance on using needs assessment to design high-quality programs in continuing education settings. She identifies the factors to be considered in planning and conducting a needs assessment, such as the educational setting and characteristics of learners, and she tells how to determine the scope, target population, and level of complexity for an assessment.Queeney details specific needs assessment methods—such as self-reporting of needs and supervisor evaluations—that can be implemented with minimal experience and resources. She explains how to design surveys, questionnaires, and interviews that will motivate people to respond. And she describes how to integrate needs assessment into an organization to make it an ongoing asset to operations.







Learning and Performance Assessment: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications


Book Description

As teaching strategies continue to change and evolve, and technology use in classrooms continues to increase, it is imperative that their impact on student learning is monitored and assessed. New practices are being developed to enhance students’ participation, especially in their own assessment, be it through peer-review, reflective assessment, the introduction of new technologies, or other novel solutions. Educators must remain up-to-date on the latest methods of evaluation and performance measurement techniques to ensure that their students excel. Learning and Performance Assessment: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that examines emerging perspectives on the theoretical and practical aspects of learning and performance-based assessment techniques and applications within educational settings. Highlighting a range of topics such as learning outcomes, assessment design, and peer assessment, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for educators, administrative officials, principals, deans, instructional designers, school boards, academicians, researchers, and education students seeking coverage on an educator’s role in evaluation design and analyses of evaluation methods and outcomes.







Evaluation of the Impact of a Full-day Continuing Education Training on how Practitioners Learn About, View, and Engage in Evidence-based Practice


Book Description

This study examined the impact of a full-day evidence-based practice (EBP) process continuing education training on practitioners' self-efficacy pertaining EBP, attitudes toward EBP, perceived feasibility of EBP, intentions to engage in EBP, self-reported engagement in EBP, and EBP knowledge. A secondary aim was to assess the impact of post-training coaching on the aforementioned outcomes at three-month follow up. The EBP Assessment Scale (Rubin & Parrish, in press) and 10 knowledge questions were used to measure the dependent variables in this study. A pretest-posttest follow up design was replicated four times, with two of the four groups receiving the coaching component based on a coin-toss. The results of this study support the effectiveness of this EBP training model, as there was significant change and moderate to strong effect sizes for each of the dependent variables over time in the desired direction. This study did not support the effectiveness of the coaching component. However, very few practitioners participated in the coaching, and for those who did, the dose of coaching was minimal. Major implications of this study for practice and policy include: 1) This EBP Process training model should be utilized as a part of future efforts to implement EBP within the field of social work; 2) The EBP process may enjoy greater success than past efforts to integrate research and practice in social work and the allied fields; 3) Some hypothesized barriers within the EBP literature were confirmed, while others were not; and 4) This study provides additional support for multi-faceted continuing education approaches and adult learning and diffusion of innovations theories when teaching practitioners the EBP process model. Future research should concentrate on finding ways to further increase practitioner engagement in EBP; identifying ways to improve support for the implementation of EBP at the organizational and policy levels; finding ways to address the most salient barriers to EBP, such as time and resources; and more effectively study the potential impact of coaching during the implementation of EBP.




Measuring the Impact of Interprofessional Education on Collaborative Practice and Patient Outcomes


Book Description

Interprofessional teamwork and collaborative practice are emerging as key elements of efficient and productive work in promoting health and treating patients. The vision for these collaborations is one where different health and/or social professionals share a team identity and work closely together to solve problems and improve delivery of care. Although the value of interprofessional education (IPE) has been embraced around the world - particularly for its impact on learning - many in leadership positions have questioned how IPE affects patent, population, and health system outcomes. This question cannot be fully answered without well-designed studies, and these studies cannot be conducted without an understanding of the methods and measurements needed to conduct such an analysis. This Institute of Medicine report examines ways to measure the impacts of IPE on collaborative practice and health and system outcomes. According to this report, it is possible to link the learning process with downstream person or population directed outcomes through thoughtful, well-designed studies of the association between IPE and collaborative behavior. Measuring the Impact of Interprofessional Education on Collaborative Practice and Patient Outcomes describes the research needed to strengthen the evidence base for IPE outcomes. Additionally, this report presents a conceptual model for evaluating IPE that could be adapted to particular settings in which it is applied. Measuring the Impact of Interprofessional Education on Collaborative Practice and Patient Outcomes addresses the current lack of broadly applicable measures of collaborative behavior and makes recommendations for resource commitments from interprofessional stakeholders, funders, and policy makers to advance the study of IPE.