Better Care Teams: A Stepwise Skill Reinforcement Model

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Education
• Community Health Initiatives
• Patient Outcome Improvement

Background:

• The Building Healthy Urban Communities initiative emphasizes continuing education (CE) for improving patient outcomes.
• Traditional CE formats were adapted with new methods and rigorous, longitudinal evaluation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of a stepwise skill reinforcement model in continuing education.
• To assess the efficiency of financial and human resources in CE delivery.
• To determine the adaptability and cost-effectiveness of the CE model for organizational adoption.

Main Methods:

• Implemented a CE initiative with adaptable traditional and novel delivery formats.
• Conducted rigorous evaluations at multiple time points: pre-course, immediate post-session, 6-8 weeks post-session, and monthly 'testlets'.
• Utilized outcome measures for content adaptation, learning objective reinforcement, and innovative testing/retrieval practice.

Main Results:

• The stepwise skill reinforcement model demonstrated effectiveness in learning after one year of programming.
• The model proved to be an efficient use of financial and human resources.
• The design is suitable for low-cost adoption by partnering organizations.

Conclusions:

• The stepwise skill reinforcement model is an effective strategy for continuing education in healthcare.
• This adaptable and resource-efficient CE model can be adopted by organizations seeking to improve patient outcomes.
• Partnership and innovative evaluation methods contribute to successful implementation.