The effectiveness of different instruction methods for risk and safety management in relation to medical profession and seniority

The study, which was guided by Prof.dr J.b. Rijsman as promotor and by Dr. Y.T. Tal as co- promotor, was a comparative interventional study that was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of different teaching & educational strategies of risk management and patient's safety in medicine. Eventually, 136 doctors from different medical professions and different seniority participated in the study and were randomly divided to three different groups. One group (53 participants) had a one hour lecture on the subject and another group (54 participants) had a one hour workshop training session dealing with the same content. The third group (29 participants) had a courseware learning session. All participants had to fill questionnaires, before the intervention, right after the learning session, two weeks after intervention and after three months. Demographic and personal professional data was collected. Questionnaires were designed and validated to collect information about the knowledge of participants, satisfaction from the learning session, willing to learn more on the subject and the attitudes towards risk management and patient's safety at the different points of time in each group of learners. Main results of the study showed that instruction by all three strategies was meaningful and effective, nevertheless there were differences of learning preferences – anesthesiologists preferred E- learning (and lectures as second choice), surgeons preferred E learning by far while pediatricians preferred it slightly more than other learning methods. Internists preferred lectures and gynecologists were indifferent in comparing the three learning strategies. Senior doctors showed statistically significant preference of workshops comparing to junior doctors that only slightly preferred workshops. E learners gained more knowledge right after the learning session but this faded quickly and after two weeks and three months the workshop group showed more knowledge and steady performance. The workshop group seemed to have gained more awareness to the importance of adverse event reporting and scored a bit higher almost in all aspects – though the difference was not always significant. The main conclusion of the study was that Instructional interventions might be best if tailored to the learning styles of specific groups of doctors. This is due to differences according to medical discipline and seniority in ratings of the various interventions. As this is the first attempt to deal with educational strategies effectiveness in medical risk management and patient's safety the researchers stated that they look forward for further studies of this subject.