Teaching preventive medicineA Community-Based Trial of an Online Intimate Partner Violence CME Program
Section snippets
Background
Intimate partner (domestic) violence (IPV), is a common problem seen in medical practice1, 2, 3 that physicians have historically handled poorly, and for which there have been long-standing calls for better education.4, 5, 6, 7 Responding to these calls, medical organizations have developed workshop-based education programs designed to improve practicing physicians’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors (KABB) in dealing with IPV. Combined with other systems-based interventions, such
Study Design
This study evaluated the effectiveness of an online IPV program in a community practice setting. The study used a pre–post test design, comparing changes in baseline measures of physician KABB on IPV at 6 and 12 months, between physicians who completed the online IPV program and physicians not assigned to take the program. The primary study hypothesis was that there would be significantly greater improvement at 6 and 12 months in KABB scores in physicians completing the online CME versus
Participant Characteristics and Flow Through the Study
Baseline PREMIS (KABB) data were collected in September and October 2003. Randomization occurred in October 2003. Initial post-test data were collected from March through May 2004. The second set of post-test data was collected between September and November 2004. Data were analyzed in 2005. As depicted in Figure 1, 85 physicians initially agreed to participate in the study; however, only 81 physicians completed the first PREMIS surveys. Forty-four of these physicians were randomly assigned to
Discussion
This study shows that an asynchronous, interactive, online CME program developed by a cadre of national experts (see acknowledgments below), in accordance with current online education best practices, can be successful in changing a number of physicians’ IPV knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and self-reported behaviors and practices, and that these changes can persist over ≥12 months. Importantly, these positive outcomes occurred in the absence of other systems changes that are typically
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