Educational needs of health professionals working in rheumatology in Europe

Vliet Vlieland, TPM; Van den Ende, CHM; Alliot-Launois, F; Beauvais, C; Gobbo, M; Iagnocco, A; Lundberg, IE; Munuera-Martínez, PV; Opava, CH; Prior, Y; Redmond, A; Smucrova, H; Wiek, D

Abstract

Objective: To explore the availability of postgraduate education for health professionals (HPs) working in rheumatology in Europe, and their perceived educational needs and barriers for participation in current educational offerings.
Methods: Structured interviews were conducted with national representatives of rheumatology HPs’ organisations and an online survey among individual HPs was disseminated through existing EULAR networks (10 languages including English). These comprised questions on: availability of postgraduate education, familiarity with EULAR and its educational offerings, unmet needs regarding the contents and mode of delivery and potential barriers to participate in education (0-10 scales).
Results: According to 17 national representatives, postgraduate rheumatology education was most common for nurses, physical and occupational therapists. There were 1041 individual responses to the survey, of whom 48% completed all questions. More than half (56%) were familiar with EULAR as an organisation, whereas less than 25% had attended the EULAR congress or was familiar with EULAR online courses. Educational needs regarding contents were highest for “inflammatory arthritis” and “connective tissue diseases” and regarding modes of delivery for “courses organised in own country” and “online courses”. Important barriers to participation included lack of “resources”, “time” and “English language skills”. Overall, there was considerable variation in needs and barriers among countries .
Conclusions: There is a lack of postgraduate rheumatology education for HPs in most countries. There are opportunities to raise awareness regarding EULAR educational offerings and to develop courses provided in HPs’ own country, tailored to national needs and barriers and taking language barriers into consideration.

Citation

Vliet Vlieland, T., Van den Ende, C., Alliot-Launois, F., Beauvais, C., Gobbo, M., Iagnocco, A., …Wiek, D. (2016). Educational needs of health professionals working in rheumatology in Europe. RMD Open, 2(2), e000337. https://doi.org/10.1136/rmdopen-2016-000337

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 22, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Nov 24, 2016
• Publication Date: Nov 24, 2016
• Deposit Date: Dec 22, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 22, 2016
• Journal: RMD Open
• Electronic ISSN: 2056-5933
• Publisher: BMJ Publishing Group
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 2
• Pages: e000337
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/rmdopen-2016-000337
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/rmdopen-2016-000337
• Related Public URLs: http://rmdopen.bmj.com/
• Additional Information: Additional Information : ULAR financially supported a meeting of the authors with the aim of developing the study protocol and the survey.