Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Oct 10, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 25, 2018 - Dec 20, 2018
Date Accepted: Apr 21, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Development and Evaluation of the Online Addiction Medicine Certificate: A Free Novel Program in a Canadian Setting
ABSTRACT
Background:
Despite the enormous burden of disease attributable to drug and alcohol addiction, there remain major challenges in implementing evidence-based addiction care and treatment modalities. This is partly due to a persistent lack of accessible, specialized training in addiction medicine. In response, a new online certificate in addiction medicine has been established in Vancouver, Canada, free of charge to participants globally.
Objective:
To evaluate and examine changes in knowledge acquisition among health care professionals before and after completion of an online certificate in addiction medicine.
Methods:
Learners enrolled in a 17-module certificate program and completed pre- and post- knowledge tests using online multiple-choice questionnaires. Knowledge acquisition was then evaluated using a repeated measures t-test of mean test scores before and after the online course. Following certificate completion, a subset of learners completed online course evaluation form.
Results:
Of the total 6985 participants who registered for the online course between May 15, 2017 and February 22, 2018, 3466 (49.6%) completed the online pre-test questionnaire. A total of 1010 participants completed the full course, achieving the required 70% scores. Participants self-reported working in a broad range of health-related fields, including nursing (371), medicine (92), counselling or social work (69), community health (44), and pharmacy (34). The median graduation year was 2010 (n = 363, interquartile range 2002-2015). Knowledge of addiction medicine increased significantly post-certificate (mean difference 28.21; 95% Confidence Interval 27.32-29.10; p<0.001). Physicians scored significantly higher on the pre-test than any other health discipline (p<0.01), while the greatest improvement in scores was seen in the counselling professions (p<0.05) and community outreach (p<0.01).
Conclusions:
This free, online, open-access certificate in addiction medicine was found to improve knowledge of learners from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. Scaling up “low threshold” learning opportunities may further advance addiction medicine training, thereby helping to narrow the evidence-to-practice gap.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.