The mCME Project:Delivering Continuing Medical Education for Community Health Workers Via SMS Text Messages

Medical Knowledge Clinical Trial

— mCME project  

Official title:

The mCME Project:Delivering Continuing Medical Education for Community Health Workers Via SMS Text Messages

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02381743
• Other study ID #: H-33241
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: March 3, 2015
• Last updated: January 11, 2016
• Start date: May 2015
• Est. completion date: November 2015

Study information

• Verified date: January 2016
• Source: Boston University
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Health authority: United States: Institutional Review Board
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

Community health workers (CHWs) provide essential basic medical care to hundreds of millions of people across the globe. CHWs offer a myriad of services including community sanitation, breast feeding counseling, family planning, management of febrile children, and malaria control and prevention, to name but a few. In fact, CHWs are often the only source of primary health care available to some of the most disadvantaged populations in the world. However, to be effective, CHWs must be trained - and retrained - at regular intervals, and the costs for such trainings can be substantial. In the US, clinicians are required to stay current and maintain their competence through continuing medical education (CME). Increasingly, CME activities are delivered via internet-based, self-teaching modules. A typical example would be a set of topical readings followed by multiple-choice questions, with the answers, and CME credit, provided to the user upon satisfactory completion of the module. This content is typically delivered over the Internet. However, there is no intrinsic reason why this approach could not be adapted so that CME activities are delivered using standard cell phones via SMS text messaging. This would significantly expand professional training opportunities to a far greater range of CHWs than possible through computer/tablet/smart phone platforms, and would be particularly valuable in poorer countries with limited training budgets. In the mCME project, the investigators propose to test the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of a mobile phone-based CME delivery strategy among Vietnamese community-based physician assistants (CBPAs), a cadre of CHW mandated to provide primary health care to rural and disadvantaged populations. The investigators hypothesize that providing CME activities over a mobile platform will significantly improve their professional knowledge, and may also improve their job satisfaction and self-efficacy.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 638
• Est. completion date: November 2015
• Est. primary completion date: November 2015
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: Both
• Age group: 18 Years to 99 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Graduated from a CBPA training program

2. Possesses their own cell phone

3. Phone able to send/receive text messages

4. Aged 18 years or older

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Unwilling to sign informed consent

2. Lives/operates in an area without cellular coverage

3. Unwilling to be randomized

4. Unwilling to adhere to study procedures

Study Design

Allocation: Randomized, Endpoint Classification: Efficacy Study, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Open Label, Primary Purpose: Health Services Research

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Medical Knowledge

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Group 2 intervention daily SMS bullet point
Group 2 subjects receive a daily SMS bullet point, summarizing a key clinical point pertinent to the CBPA's daily work.
• Group 3 intervention daily SMS bullet point
Group 3 subjects receive a c phrased as a multiple choice question. The content mirrors that of group 2, but is presented as a question to render it interactive

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
n/a

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Boston University

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Other	cost effectiveness analysis of the mCME intervention in terms of costs to increase a study test score by X %	costs and cost effectiveness analysis of the mCME intervention in terms of costs to increase a study test score by X %	Duration of project	No
Primary	Medical knowledge (Score on medical knowledge exams)	Score on medical knowledge exams administered at baseline and at the end of six months of the intervention	6 months	No
Secondary	Job satisfaction (Score on likert scale)	Score on likert scale measuring job satisfaction	6 months	No
Secondary	Self efficacy (Score in likert scale)	Score in likert scale measuring self efficacy	6 months	No