Continuing education programs for pharmacists: No one size fits all
Keywords:
Community pharmacists, continuing education, formats, motivation, surveyAbstract
This study aims to profile pharmacists based on their preferences for continuing education (CE) formats, and to investigate whether preferences for formats are associated with motivation to attend courses, preferences for topics and demographic traits. Data were gathered from a survey of 1032 Belgian community pharmacists. Cluster analysis generated three groups. Pharmacists not preferring lectures (cluster one; n = 133) were more likely to be older men, had the greatest interest in distance learning and were motivated by material incentives. Pharmacists interested in lectures as well as workshops (cluster two; n = 595) exhibited the highest intrinsic motivation to engage in CE. Pharmacists preferring lectures but not workshops (cluster three; n = 304) were more likely to be women and disliked active involvement in CE. This study shows that motivation to attend courses, preferences for topics, and demographic characteristics play a role in determining pharmacists’ preferences for CE program formats.References
Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education. (2005). The ACPE continuing education provider accreditation program: Criteria for quality and interpretive guidelines, (online) http://www. acpe-accredit.org. Accessed November 13.
Agresti, A., & Finlay, B. (1997). Statistical methods for the social sciences, 3 ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Bero, L. A., Grilli, R., Grimshaw, J. M., Harvey, E., Oxman, A. D., & Thomson, M. A. (2005). Closing the gap between research and practice: An overview of interventions to promote the implementation of research findings. British Medical Journal, 317, 465–468.
Bonk, C. J. (2002). Online training in an online world. Bloomington: CourseShare.com.
Carter, M. B., Wesley, G., & Larson, G. M. (2005). Didactic lecture versus instructional patient interaction in the surgical clerkship. American Journal of Surgery, 189, 243–248.
Chiu, T., Fang, D. P., Chen, J., Wang, Y., & Jeris, C. (2001). A robust and scalable clustering algorithm for mixed type attributes in large database environment. ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining (pp. 263 – 268). New York, NY: ACM press.
Cordero, L., Cadavid, M. I., Fernande ́z-Llimo ́s, F., D ́ıaz, C., Sanz, F., & Loza, M. I. (2004). Continuing education and community pharmacists in Galicia: A study of opinions. Pharmacy World and Science, 26, 173–177.
Davis, D., Thomson, M. A., Freemantle, N., Wolf, F. M., Mazmanian, P., & Taylor-Vaisey, A. (1999). Impact of formal continuing medical education. Do conferences, workshops, rounds and other traditional continuing education activities change physician behavior of health care outcomes? Journal of the American Medical Association, 282, 867–874.
Driesen, A., Leemans, L., Baert, H., & Laekeman, G. (2005). Flemish community pharmacists’ motivation and views related to continuing education. Pharmacy World and Science, 27, 447 – 452.
Federal Pharmacists’ Chamber. (2006). Leitsa ̈tze zur apothekerlichen Fortbildung—Empfehlungen der Bundesapothekerkammer [Guiding principles for pharmacy continuing education—Recommendations of the federal pharmacists chamber]. (online) http://www.abda.de. Accessed January 3.
Haidet, P., Morgan, R. O., O’Malley, K., Moran, B. J., & Richards, B. F. (2004). A controlled trial of active versus passive learning strategies in a large group setting. Advances in Health Sciences Education: Theory and Practice, 9, 15–27.
Harden, R. M. (2005). A new vision for distance learning and continuing medical education. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 25, 51.
Harden, R. M., & Laidlaw, J. M. (1992). Effective continuing education: The CRISIS criteria. Medical Education, 26, 408 – 422.
Harrison, C., & Hogg, W. (2003). Why do doctors attend traditional CME events if they don’t change what they do in their surgeries? Evaluation of doctor’s reasons for attending a traditional CME programme. Medical Education, 37, 884–888.
Maio, V., Belazi, D., Goldfarb, N. I., Philips, A. L., & Crawford, A. G. (2003). Use and effectiveness of pharmacy continuing- education materials. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 60, 1644–1649.
Nixon, J. (2000). How does the UK NHS compare with European standards? A review of EU health care systems using hierarchical cluster analysis. York: Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. (2006). CPD & PI program, (online) http://www.psa.org.au/ecms.cfm?id 1⁄4 396. Accessed January 11.
Scott, V. G., Amonkar, M. M., & Madhavan, S. S. (2001). Pharmacists’ preferences for continuing education and certifi- cate programs. Annals of Pharmacotherapy, 35, 289–299.
Stancic, N., Dolan Mullen, P., Prokhorov, A. V., Frankowski, R. F., & McAlister, A. L. (2003). Continuing medical education: What delivery format do physicians prefer? Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 23, 162–167.
Staquet, M. J., Hays, R. D., & Fayers, P. M. (1998). Quality of life assessment in clinical trials. Methods and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thomson, M. A., Freemantle, N., Oxman, A. D., Wolf, F. M., Davis, D., & Herrin, J. (2001). Continuing education meetings and workshops: Effects on professional practice and health care outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2.
Zhang, T., Ramakrishnon, R., & Livny, M. (1996). An efficient data clustering method for very large databases. ACM SIGMOD conference on management of data, 103–114.
