Educational benefits and cost savings from an interactive multimedia "best practice"

Developing and deploying "clinical practice guidelines" and "best practices" is a major strategic goal of our organization. We developed and evaluated a novel way of educating our colleagues on the office management of shoulder pain, using an interactive multimedia computer program to allow rapid access to user-selected audiovisual educational materials through a simple point and click interface.

Pre- and post-testing of 30 practicing primary care providers was conducted to assess ability to evaluate and manage patients who present with shoulder pain, and a post-use survey was administered to assess clinician acceptance and confidence, ability to use as a just-in-time tool, and changes in utilization of medical resources.

Pre- and post-testing demonstrated that clinicians used this tool to improve their scores in a wide variety of clinical areas including history, physical examination, diagnosis, and management of conditions causing painful shoulder above their scores using textbooks and other traditional educational materials alone. The post-use survey showed outstanding acceptance by clinicians and their reported increased confidence as well as the potential for their increased abilities to translate into significant cost savings through more focused use of radiographic studies, orthopedic consultations, and physical therapy treatments.

It was concluded that "The Multimedia Reference for Office Management of Shoulder Pain" is an effective and valuable learning resource for practicing clinicians, and demonstrates the potential to use an interactive multimedia tool to augment clinical skills and promote cost effective management of patients with this common clinical problem.