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Improving on-line skills and knowledge. A randomized trial of teaching rural physicians to use on-line medical
Jonathan Kronick1, Catherine Blake, Eeva Munoz
1Office of Professional and Educational Development, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, The University of Western Ontario, London. jonathan.kronick@med.uwo.ca
Objective:
To assess the change in frequency and methods with which a pilot group of rural physicians consulted on-line medical resources before and after an educational intervention.
Design:
Physicians were randomly assigned to an educational intervention or control group. Self-administered questionnaires were completed before and 3 months after the intervention.
Setting:
Rural practices in southwestern Ontario.
Participants:
Eighty rural (defined as a population of 15000 or less) physicians in southwestern Ontario, with a computer with Internet access.
Interventions:
Individualized 3-hour training session on using the World Wide Web to research patient-related questions.
Main Outcome Measures:
Frequency of access and comfort with on-line medical information were compared after intervention with baseline data using the Wilcoxon two-sample test.
Results:
At follow up, the intervention group showed a significant improvement over the control group in their frequency of accessing the World Wide Web to address patient-related questions (P = .009), in their comfort level in using on-line databases (P = .032), and in their frequency of accessing on-line databases (P = .044).
Conclusion:
Rural physicians' comfort and competence in using computers to address patient problems can be improved by an individualized 3-hour training session.
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