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)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Development and Evaluation of the Online Addiction Medicine Certificate: Free Novel Program in a Canadian Setting
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 because of 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:
The objective of this study was to evaluate and examine changes in knowledge acquisition among health care professionals before and after the completion of an online certificate in addiction medicine.
Methods:
Learners enrolled in a 17-module certificate program and completed pre- and postknowledge 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 the certificate completion, a subset of learners completed the 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 (49.62%) completed the online pretest questionnaire. A total of 1010 participants completed the full course, achieving the required 70% scores. TThe participants self-reported working in a broad range of health-related fields, including nursing (n=371), medicine (n=92), counseling or social work (n=69), community health (n=44), and pharmacy (n=34). The median graduation year was 2010 (n=363, interquartile range 2002-2015). Knowledge of the addiction medicine increased significantly postcertificate (mean difference 28.21; 95% CI 27.32 to 29.10; P<.001). Physicians scored significantly higher on the pretest than any other health discipline, whereas the greatest improvement in scores was seen in the counseling professions and community outreach.
Conclusions:
This free, online, open-access certificate in addiction medicine appeared 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.