mCME Delivering continuing medical education to community health workers using cell phones

描述(申请人提供)：社区卫生工作者(CHW)为全球数亿人提供基本医疗服务。社区卫生服务中心提供各种服务，包括社区卫生、母乳喂养咨询、计划生育、发烧儿童管理以及疟疾控制和预防，仅举几例。事实上，社区卫生组织往往是世界上一些处境最不利的人口获得初级卫生保健的唯一来源。然而，为了有效，社区卫生工作者必须定期接受培训和再培训，而这种培训的费用可能会很高。在美国，临床医生被要求保持与时俱进，并通过继续医学教育(CME)保持他们的能力。越来越多的继续医学教育活动是通过基于互联网的自学模块进行的。一个典型的例子是一组主题读物，然后是多项选择题，以及答案和CME学分，在圆满完成模块后提供给用户。这些内容通常通过互联网传递。然而，没有内在的理由不能调整这种方法，以便使用标准的手机通过短信发送CME活动。与通过计算机/平板电脑/智能手机平台相比，这将极大地将专业培训机会扩大到更广泛的社区卫生工作者，在培训预算有限的较贫穷国家将特别宝贵。在McMe项目中，我们建议在越南社区医生助理(CBPA)中测试基于移动电话的继续医学教育交付策略的有效性和成本效益，CBPA是CHW的一支队伍，负责为农村和弱势群体提供初级卫生保健。我们假设，通过移动平台提供继续医学教育活动将显著提高他们的专业知识，并可能提高他们的工作满意度和自我效能感。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Community health workers (CHWs) provide essential basic medical care to hundreds of millions of people across the globe. CHWs offer a myriad of services including community sanitation, breast feeding counseling, family planning, management of febrile children, and malaria control and prevention, to name but a few. In fact, CHWs are often the only source of primary health care available to some of the most disadvantaged populations in the world. However, to be effective, CHWs must be trained - and retrained - at regular intervals, and the costs for such trainings can be substantial. In the US, clinicians are required to stay current and maintain their competence through continuing medical education (CME). Increasingly, CME activities are delivered via internet-based, self-teaching modules. A typical example would be a set of topical readings followed by multiple-choice questions, with the answers, and CME credit, provided to the user upon satisfactory completion of the module. This content is typically delivered over the Internet. However, there is no intrinsi reason why this approach could not be adapted so that CME activities are delivered using standard cell phones via SMS text messaging. This would significantly expand professional training opportunities to a far greater range of CHWs than possible through computer/tablet/smart phone platforms, and would be particularly valuable in poorer countries with limited training budgets. In the mCME project, we propose to test the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of a mobile phone-based CME delivery strategy among Vietnamese community-based physician assistants (CBPAs), a cadre of CHW mandated to provide primary health care to rural and disadvantaged populations. We hypothesize that providing CME activities over a mobile platform will significantly improve their professional knowledge, and may also improve their job satisfaction and self- efficacy.