Evaluating the Relationship Between Different Continuing Education Deliverables and the Improvement in Pharmacist Education Confidence on Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

5:30 PM – 7:00 PM

Location: Exhibit Hall

Primary Presenter(s)

Michelle C. Carlson

Scientific Director
Pharmacy Times Continuing Education

Slides

Presenter(s)

Ashley Wetstein

Outcomes Manager
Pharmacy Times Continuing Education

Health Care Problem: As key contributors to every health care team, pharmacists need to receive the most appropriate education through the highest quality continuing education (CE) programs. This project helps identify which deliverables of CE programs are most impactful on pharmacist knowledge and confidence improvement, from baseline to post-activity. Greater knowledge and confidence improvement from CE programs allows pharmacists to incorporate what they learned into everyday practice. Both the scientific affairs and outcomes departments collaborated to pull outcomes data from various deliverables of live and on-demand age-related macular degeneration (AMD) CE programs. The prevalence of AMD is rapidly increasing, and pharmacists need to understand the background of the disease, how to manage patients with AMD, and how to minimize the economic burden. An improvement in learner knowledge and confidence on prevalent disease states, such as AMD, can translate into their everyday practice and, hopefully, optimize patient care. The data was pulled from an assessment question that was asked before and after participating in the program. Learners were asked to identify their confidence in knowledge of AMD by selecting: not at all, somewhat, moderately, very, or extremely confident. The percentage of learners who selected moderately, very, or extremely confident were evaluated and the percentage of relative improvement was calculated. It was expected that all on-demand programs would have overall higher confidence improvement than all live programs. Of the live programs, it was expected that live symposia, such as webinars presented at conferences, would have highest improvement in confidence compared with other live program deliverables.

Educational Strategy:

Continuing Education™ (PTCE) can deliver more programs that would most effectively educate pharmacists on diseases such as AMD. Four different CE deliverables were analyzed. These deliverables included a live and on-demand symposium, webinar, panel discussion, and written supplement. The CE programs and their data were pulled from 2020 to 2022. The CEs selected had similar participation numbers for the live and on-demand program. This allowed for a fair balanced analysis of the live and on-demand sessions. These participation numbers varied in the hundreds for each program with a minimum of 120 participants. Through learner participation on the pre- and post-assessment questions, we can recognize significant improvements in learners’ confidence on AMD for different CE program deliverables. The learner participation also provides sufficient data to calculate the percentage of relative improvement in learner knowledge and confidence from beginning to end of the program.

Patient-Level Outcome(s) Measured:

Hundreds of pharmacists participated in live and on-demand AMD CE programs provided by PTCE. The CE deliverables varied from live conference symposia, panel discussions, supplements, and webinars to their corresponding on-demand postings. Results from the confidence assessment question showed that all live programs had an outstanding relative improvement of over 200%. This demonstrated that all live programs had been beneficial to appropriately addressing learners’ needs. Although all the live programs were shown to improve learners’ confidence significantly, the webinars seemed to be the most impactful live CE deliverable. In addition to the live programs, the learners’ confidence of on-demand programs was analyzed. It was found that on-demand programs showed some relative improvement in confidence but were less than half as effective as live programs. This shows a need for more live in-person or live virtual CE programs to educate pharmacists most efficiently. In addition, increased confidence leads to pharmacists being more likely to implement changes in practice. The majority of pharmacists with higher confidence improvement from these live CE programs indicated that they are more likely to share information that they learned from the program with a peer. The sharing of information with a peer can educate more pharmacists beyond the learners and positively impact patient care.