SES Hubs: Improving outcomes in hematology

Our educational programs are based on robust needs assessments, constructed to identify the key education and practice gaps evident within a therapy area. This enables the creation of focussed education, designed to address pressing needs facing healthcare professionals. An essential aspect of the delivery of any independent medical education is to understand how effective an activity has been in closing the practice gaps identified in the needs assessment (1). We evaluate the effectiveness of our education according to Moore's expanded outcomes framework,(2) and earlier this year we introduced a “quick quiz” and satisfaction surveys to our hub content to help us evaluate the effectiveness of our hubs up to Moore’s level 4 (Figure 1).  

Figure 1. Methods for measuring outcomes across our hubs 

To understand satisfaction among our learners, we ask them to rate their level of agreement (out of five) with statements related to the provided content. Specifically, whether: 

• The content was clear and easy to understand 
• The content addressed the learning objective(s) 
• The content was relevant to their clinical practice 

To evaluate changes in knowledge and competence, we design pre-and post-activity questions to ascertain whether our specific and measurable learning objectives have been met. The pre-activity test questions are identical to the post-activity test questions, so by using the pre-activity test responses as a baseline, we can measure improvements resulting from our education. These quizzes are intended as a fun challenge for readers, providing them with the opportunity to test their knowledge, improve on their pre-activity quiz score, and compare themselves to the average score of their colleagues. The “quick quiz” was trialled on the Lymphoma Hub from February 2022 and rolled out across our remaining hematology platforms from April 2022.

Our hubs are making a positive impact in hematology 

Across our hematology platforms we achieve positive outcomes relating to both satisfaction and knowledge change. All hubs are consistently achieving satisfaction scores above 4 out of 5, suggesting that our content is clear, addresses our objectives, and is clinically relevant. Further to this, our combined results for our seven hematology platforms show that our educational content is raising levels of knowledge among healthcare professionals, with 27% of those responding to the quick quizzes improving their knowledge after viewing hub content (Figure 2).  

Figure 2. Preliminary outcome results for our hematology hubs

All our hematology hubs are lifting levels of knowledge, with the percentage of healthcare professionals improving their knowledge after viewing hub content ranging from 20% (AML Hub) to 50% (Lymphoma Hub). We are also assessing outcomes on our recently launched Lupus Hub and Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis Hub, and look forward to exploring our outcomes data in immunology in due course. As our educational content and engagement with our outcomes assessments grows across our hubs, we anticipate seeing a strengthening impact on outcomes. Importantly, our outcomes feed back into our needs assessment process, and this ensures that we are continually optimizing our education. This approach ensures that we are consistently providing effective education, in areas where it is needed, to improve patient outcomes. 

References 

1.Shannon S. Needs assessment for CME. Lancet. 2003;361(9361):974. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(03)12765-1 

2.Moore DE Jr, et al. Achieving desired results and improved outcomes: integrating planning and assessment throughout learning activities. J Contin Educ Health Prof. 2009;29(1):1-15. DOI: 10.1002/chp.20001