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（CHWs）为全球数亿人提供必要的基本医疗保健。保健院提供各种服务，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，卫生保健中心往往是世界上一些处境最不利人群获得初级卫生保健的唯一来源。然而，要想发挥作用，卫生保健员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，临床医生需要通过继续医学教育（CME）保持最新状态并保持其能力。越来越多的CME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专题阅读，然后是多项选择题，在满意地完成模块后，将答案和CME学分提供给用户。这些内容通常通过Internet传递。然而，没有任何内在的理由说明为什么不能调整这种方法，以便使用标准的手机通过SMS文本消息传递CME活动。与通过电脑/平板电脑/智能手机平台相比，这将大大扩大专业培训机会，使更多的卫生保健工作者获得培训机会，并且在培训预算有限的较贫穷国家尤其有价值。在mCME项目中，我们建议在越南社区医师助理（cbpa）中测试基于移动电话的CME交付策略的有效性和成本效益，cbpa是负责向农村和弱势群体提供初级卫生保健的CHW骨干。我们假设在移动平台上提供持续教育活动可以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.