Development of a fall prevention survey to determine educational needs for primary care providers

Quality indicators are standardized measures of health care quality. We designed a survey to assess how knowledge, attitude, and organizational practices might affect healthcare provider behaviors in meeting quality indicators for fall prevention to plan curricula for a continuing educational intervention. The survey was pilot tested in the Veterans Affairs (VA) in a small stratified sample. Some items that had been previously used in assessments for continuing education among community physicians were not well matched to the VA practice environment or to midlevel clinicians, suggesting that instruments need to be adapted for relevance to the health care setting as well as discipline.