Healthy People 2010 Emergency Medicine Module: a multicenter survey and educational intervention.

ABSTRACT

To educate emergency medicine (EM) residents about Healthy People 2010 (HP2010), the nation's public health agenda. Participating EM residency programs were given a 40-min slide presentation and a 4-item post-test that we developed. In two residency programs, we conducted a "before-after" study to assess the reliability of the test instrument. Fifteen residencies participated, with 289 individuals (70% EM residents) attending the lectures. Only 19% reported any knowledge of HP2010 before exposure to the Module. Nevertheless, after exposure, 182 (90%) scored 75% or better on the four questions specifically testing the informational content of the Module. In the reliability study, residents showed significant improvement from the pre-test on both the immediate and 2-week post-tests (both p<0.001). In conclusion, we found that EM residents' baseline knowledge of HP2010 was poor, and that the EM Module improved knowledge about this important public health document.