Advancing Teamwork in Health Care Through Continuing Education Joint Accreditation.

ABSTRACT: Teamwork is a necessity for effective care of patients in the current health care environment. Continuing education providers are best positioned to teach health care professionals about teamwork. However, health care professionals and continuing education providers largely operate in single-profession-based environments and thus need to change their programs and activities to achieve team improvement education goals. Joint Accreditation (JA) for Interprofessional Continuing Education is designed to advance teamwork to improve quality care through education programs. However, achieving JA requires significant changes to an education program that are multifaceted and complex to implement. Although challenging, implementation of JA is an effective way to advance interprofessional continuing education. Here, we discuss numerous practical strategies that can aid education programs to prepare for and achieve JA, such as attaining organizational alignment and provider adaptation to expand curriculums, reinventing the education planning process, and implementing tools to help manage the joint accredited program.

Observations from Transforming a Continuing Education programme in the COVID-19 Era and Preparing for the Future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted and transformed continuing education in the health professions to be reliant on digital learning modalities. This retrospective observational study of a large, international health system's continuing education programme compares educational activities offered, participation, and learning outcomes pre- and intra-pandemic to assess the impact of digitisation advanced because of the pandemic. There was a significant increase in internet-based activities that filled the gap of cancelled or postponed live, in-person activities to keep healthcare professionals up to date in their specialities and prepared to handle the clinical and hospital demands of the pandemic. Compared to live, in-person education, virtual activities were offered in shorter increments, reached a much larger amount of participants, and were equally effective in achieving learning outcomes. Questions remain regarding business model implications to generate adequate revenues to cover costs of virtual education. Additionally, there is a general inadequacy of digital learning environments to coalesce groups and meet social needs. Regardless, the efficiencies and effectiveness of digital modalities will be a primary method of teaching healthcare professionals going forward.

The impact of a quality improvement continuing medical education intervention on physicians' vaccination practice: a controlled study.

This study investigated the impact of a longitudinal quality improvement continuing medical education (CME) intervention on influenza and pneumococcal vaccination rates for patient populations at high-risk or aged ≥ 65. An observational cohort design with a propensity score to adjust for vaccine eligibility between the intervention and control cohorts was utilized to assess the impact of the intervention among primary care physicians. The intervention was a three-stage quality improvement initiative with CME learning activities. Stage A was an assessment of practice to establish baseline performance. Stage B was participation in learning interventions and individualized action planning for practice change, and Stage C was practice reassessment. Data were also collected for a control group of clinicians who did not participate during the same period. One hundred primary care physicians completed all 3 intervention stages10/14 - 7/15. Altogether, 361,528 patient records of vaccine receipt were compared for those physicians who completed the educational intervention and those who did not. The percentage of physicians' adult patients receiving influenza or pneumococcal vaccination increased on all measures. The difference between intervention versus control groups was 3.4% higher for influenza ≥ 65 years, 2.1% for influenza high-risk, 0.6% for pneumococcal ≥ 65 years, and 1.4% for pneumococcal high-risk. These results show that physician participation in a quality improvement CME initiative can be an effective strategy to improve vaccination administration. The findings strengthen the evidence that CME learning interventions can advance quality improvement goals and more favorably affect physicians' practice when educational strategies are utilized.