Hello:
Not sure if this question is appropriate for this list serve but maybe the answer will be interesting to some of the group.
MY QUESTION
Does providing participants at continuing health care educational events with a list of 2-3 objectives for each talk improve knowledge uptake or provide any measurable useful outcome? Is there is any evidence that participants even use them etc?
I have had a quick look and have been unable to find any evidence but I may not be looking in the right places.
BACKGROUND
1) I give dozens of different "evidence-based" talks a year and for each one of them as part of an educational accreditation process I'm "forced" to create 2-3 learning objectives which need to be prominently displayed on my handout and presented at the beginning of my talk. While it is not a huge amount of work, when you have to do it dozens of times for different topics it is an added administrative burden especially given that I often do talks for no honourarium. However, if there was evidence that people really used them or if it improved outcomes I would have no problem doing it.
2) I recently asked 100's of participants at 2-3 conferences if any of them ever used these learning objectives and not one of them said they did. Maybe it was a biased sample but the lack of a yes response was deafening.
Does anyone know of any evidence that providing objectives improves any educational experience (even in a health care curriculum) or is it purely a philosophy whose benefit is taken for granted.
Thanks.
James McCormack, BSc(Pharm), Pharm D
Professor
Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences
UBC, Vancouver, Canada
therapeuticseducation.org
604-603-7898
|