Practical study on an interprofessional education programme for clinical research literacy through writing Cochrane Systematic Reviews with information and communication technology

Article type
Authors
Hasegawa T1, Nishiwaki H2, Yajima N3, Ota E4, Noma H5, Koiwa F2, Miyazaki T6
1Showa University Research Administration Center (SURAC) / Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, Showa University Fujigaoka Hospital
2Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, Showa University Fujigaoka Hospital
3Division of Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Showa University Hospital
4Global Health Nursing, Graduate School of Nursing Science, St.Luke's International University
5Department of Data Science, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics
6Showa University Research Administration Center (SURAC)
Abstract
Background: interprofessional education (IPE) is important to achieve high-quality team medical care. Clinical research literacy is required as an essential ability for all medical personnel to practice evidence-based medicine. In order to acquire clinical research literacy, it is effective to not only learn the required knowledge but also conduct an actual clinical study as an on-the-job training (OJT) exercise. However, it is often difficult to construct and maintain primary research data.

Objectives: this practical study on an IPE programme seeks to maximize clinical research literacy outreach, providing continuous support for writing Cochrane Systematic Reviews (Cochrane SRs) using information and communication technology (ICT) in a medical university comprising schools of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing and rehabilitation sciences.

Methods: we built an e-learning platform for essential clinical research literacy in basic clinical epidemiology and medical statistics. On this online learning website, we provide on-demand e-learning contents for a total of 45 hours on three subjects: basic clinical epidemiology; basic clinical statistics; and clinical statistics hands-on. We also regularly hold face-to-face educational seminars and workshops on Cochrane SRs in collaboration with the Japan Cochrane Centre. These IPE programmes continuously support activities related to Cochrane SRs, such as title registrations, protocols, and full reviews. We further developed this platform to support the IPE programmes through online systems (online meetings, bulletin boards, etc.).

Results: by the end of March 2019, 462 people had registered for online learning (44.8% for doctors, 9.4% for dentists, 13.1% for pharmacists, 8.5% for nurses, and 24.2% for others); the on-demand e-learning contents have been viewed more than 1400 times in total. We have registered one Cochrane SR title and published one Cochrane SR protocol (DOI: 10.1002 /14651858.CD013109) so far. One Cochrane SR full review article is also in progress.

Conclusions: Cochrane SRs are secondary researches using data from previous studies, and thus do not require primary data. Cochrane SRs require a series of clinical research skills, such as research proposal writing, literature search, data analysis, and interpretation and consideration of results. Therefore, Cochrane SR is suitable for OJT in clinical research. We built a hybrid IPE programme (face-to-face and e-learning) for clinical research literacy through continuous support for writing Cochrane SRs. This IPE programme has the potential to alleviate the spatial and temporal barriers to the dissemination of clinical research literacy to busy healthcare professionals in daily practice.

Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: in the future, patients and healthcare consumers should be involved not only in the development of clinical practice guidelines but also in the education of medical professionals to acquire clinical research literacy.