Improving primary care in British Columbia, Canada: evaluation of a peer-to-peer continuing education program for family physicians

Abstract

BackgroundAn innovative program, the Practice Support Program (PSP), for full-service family physicians and their medical office assistants in primary care practices was recently introduced in British Columbia, Canada. The PSP was jointly approved by both government and physician groups, and is a dynamic, interactive, educational and supportive program that offers peer-to-peer training to physicians and their office staff. Topic areas range from clinical tools/skills to office management relevant to General Practitioner (GP) practices and “doable in real GP time”. PSP learning modules consist of three half-day learning sessions interspersed with 6–8 week action periods. At the end of the third learning session, all participants were asked to complete a pen-and-paper survey that asked them to rate (a) their satisfaction with the learning module components, including the content and (b) the perceived impact the learning has had on their practices and patients.MethodsA total of 887 GPs (response rates ranging from 26.0% to 60.2% across three years) and 405 MOAs (response rates from 21.3% to 49.8%) provided responses on a pen-and-paper survey administered at the last learning session of the learning module. The survey asked respondents to rate (a) their satisfaction with the learning module components, including the content and (b) the perceived impact the learning has had on their practices and patients. The psychometric properties (Chronbach’s alphas) of the satisfaction and impact scales ranged from .82 to .94.ResultsEvaluation findings from the first three years of the PSP indicated consistently high satisfaction ratings and perceived impact on GP practices and patients, regardless of physician characteristics (gender, age group) or work-related variables (e.g., time worked in family practice). The Advanced Access Learning Module, which offers tools to improve office efficiencies, decreased wait times for urgent, regular and third next available appointments by an average of 1.2, 3.3, and by 3.4 days across all physicians. For the Chronic Disease Management module, over 87% of all GP respondents developed a CDM patient registry and reported being able to take better care of their patients. After attending the Adult Mental Health module: 94.1% of GPs agreed that they felt more comfortable helping patients who required mental health care; over 82% agreed that their skills and their confidence in diagnosing and treating mental health conditions had improved; and 41.0% agreed that their frequency of prescribing medications, if appropriate, had decreased. Additionally for the Adult Mental Health module, a 3–6 month follow-up survey of the GPs indicated that the implemented changes were sustained over time.ConclusionGP and medical office assistant participant ratings show that the PSP learning modules were consistently successful in providing GPs and their staff with new learning that was relevant and could be implemented and used in “real-GP-time”.

Health system reforms in mature welfare states: tales from the north

“…In BC, improvements to primary care involved first creating a partnership between government and physicians to take on leadership of improvement efforts. Policies to incentivize particular activities were matched by training opportunities to increase front-line capacities to reorient practice toward priority areas, and by the creation of regional Divisions of Family Practice as forums in which physicians could learn from each other and exchange ideas for improvement (128,129) .…”

Mental Health Practice and Attitudes of Family Physicians Can Be Changed!

“…The PSP team was available to help support the physicians and medical office assistants in the implementation of the tools and the office redesign required. 12 The training usually took about five months to cover the three learning sessions and the two action periods that separated the learning sessions.…”

Family physicians enhance end-of-life care: evaluation of a new continuing medical education learning module in British Columbia

“…A novel continuing medical education (CME) program, the Practice Support Program (PSP) previously described by MacCarthy et al [ 1 , 2 ], continues to be offered to family physicians/general practitioners (GPs) and their staff in the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The PSP involves peer-to-peer training on a number of clinical and office management topics that are offered in learning modules for CME credit (see http://www.gpscbc.ca/practice-support-program ).…”

“…The PSP involves peer-to-peer training on a number of clinical and office management topics that are offered in learning modules for CME credit (see http://www.gpscbc.ca/practice-support-program ). MacCarthy et al [ 1 ] reported the results from the initial four PSP learning modules on chronic disease management, group medical visits, patient self-management, and advanced access/office efficiency, and MacCarthy et al [ 2 ] reported on the adult mental health module. Here we report the evaluation results from the PSP learning module that offers CME accredited training to GPs to enhance care for their patients who require end-of-life (EOL) care and their families.…”