Kristine Rand with The France Foundation did a 10-minute presentation on the results of research she did on the immediate impact on knowledge gained through peer-to-peer CME dinner meetings at the SACME fall meeting in Boston. She used a dinner meeting series designed to educate psychiatrists on how to recognize, diagnose, and treat bipolar disorder as the basis for her study.
From August 2003 to July 2004, she studied 64 dinner meetings nationally, using pre- and post-tests to measure knowledge gain. In ever region of the country, the shrinks went from (I think it was an average; might have been mean) 68 percent correct on the pre-test to 81.9 percent on the post-test. The greatest knowledge gain was in the epidemiology of bipolar disorder, which increased 21 percent by meeting s end; diagnosis knowledge increased 15.3 percent, followed by treatment (9.8) and safety (9.8). The lowest pre-test scores were in epidemiology and diagnosis, so the greatest gains were made in the areas the docs most needed to learn about. The next step she d like to take is to test further to see if they actually change their behavior as a result of the knowledge gain, and if patient health improves.
During the Q&A, the presenter got a fair amount of (nicely worded) flack for using the dinner meeting format rather than something more interactive, but her results do seem to suggest that, at least immediately after they re done ingesting chow and knowledge, these docs did appear to learn something.
To comment on this post, click on "comments" below. To receive a weekly update, e-mail Sue.
