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

描述（由申请人提供）：社区卫生工作者（CHW）为地球仪数亿人提供基本的医疗服务。社区卫生工作者提供各种服务，包括社区卫生、母乳喂养咨询、计划生育、发热儿童管理、疟疾控制和预防等。事实上，社区卫生工作者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很高。在美国，临床医生必须通过继续医学教育（CME）保持最新并保持其能力。越来越多的继续医学教育活动通过基于互联网的自学模块进行。一个典型的例子是一组主题阅读，然后是多项选择题，答案和CME学分，在令人满意地完成模块后提供给用户。这些内容通常通过互联网提供。然而，没有内在的原因为什么这种方法不能适应，使继续医学教育活动提供使用标准手机通过短信。这将大大扩大专业培训机会，使更多的社区卫生工作者获得培训机会，而不是通过电脑/平板电脑/智能手机平台，这在培训预算有限的贫穷国家尤其有价值。在mCME项目中，我们建议在越南社区医生助理（CBPA）中测试基于移动的电话的CME交付策略的有效性和成本效益，CBPA是CHW的一个干部，负责为农村和弱势群体提供初级卫生保健。我们假设通过移动的平台提供继续医学教育活动将显著提高他们的专业知识，也可能提高他们的工作满意度和自我效能。

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.