Exploring Current Practices, Needs, and Barriers for Expanding Distributed Medical Education and Scholarship in...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Psychiatry
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Distributed medical education (DME) enhances training capacity and rural physician recruitment.
• Engaged faculty are crucial for DME success, requiring integration into scholarly activities.
• A methodological gap exists in designing environmental scans for DME research, particularly in psychiatry.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a protocol for environmental scanning to understand current practices and identify needs/barriers for integrating psychiatrists into DME.
• To inform strategic planning and decision-making for expanding distributed psychiatric education at Dalhousie University.
• To facilitate the involvement of psychiatrists from distributed sites in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Main Methods:

• An innovative approach combining formal information search and explanatory design with quantitative and qualitative data.
• Anonymous web-based surveys for ~120 psychiatrists on demographics, education, research, and scholarly activity interests.
• Focus group sessions with a purposive sample to gather qualitative data on perspectives regarding DME expansion.

Main Results:

• Expected results within 6 months of data collection.
• Informing policy options for expanding psychiatry residency and fellowship programs at distributed learning sites.
• Leveraging regional infrastructure and human resources, especially in rural areas.

Conclusions:

• Proposes a comprehensive environmental scan procedure adapted from existing approaches.
• Collects data on factors influencing psychiatrists' engagement in research and scholarly activities for DME expansion.
• Fills information gaps in DME, providing insights to shape psychiatric education and establish programs in underserved areas.