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An online academic writing and publishing skills course: Help Syrians find their voice.

ABSTRACT: A group of Arab-American physicians and researchers in the United States organized a blended online course in academic writing and publishing in medicine targeting medical students and physicians in war-torn Syria. This was an effort to address one of the reasons behind the poor quantity and quality of scientific research papers in Syria and the Arab region. In this paper, we report on the design, conduct, and outcome of this course and attempt to evaluate its effectiveness.The educational intervention was a 2-month blended online course. We administered a questionnaire to assess satisfaction and self-reported improvement in knowledge, confidence, and skills of academic writing and publishing.The course succeeded in reaching more than 2588 physicians and medical students from the region; 159 of them completed most of the course. Eighty-three percent of the participants felt that they were confident enough to write an academic paper after the course and 95% felt the learning objectives were achieved with an average student satisfaction of 8.4 out of 10.Physicians in Syria and neighboring countries are in need of training to become an active part of the global scientific community and to document and communicate the crisis their countries are going through from a medical perspective. Low-cost online educational initiatives help respond, at least partially, to those needs.

SUBMITTER: Sabouni A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5525463 | biostudies-other | 2017 Jul-Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:BackgroundA quarter of acute hospital beds are occupied by persons living with dementia, many of whom have communication problems. Healthcare professionals lack confidence in dementia communication skills, but there are no evidence-based communication skills training approaches appropriate for professionals working in this context. We aimed to develop and pilot a dementia communication skills training course that was acceptable and useful to healthcare professionals, hospital patients and their relatives.MethodsThe course was developed using conversation analytic findings from video recordings of healthcare professionals talking to patients living with dementia in the acute hospital, together with systematic review evidence of dementia communication skills training and taking account of expert and service-user opinion. The two-day course was based on experiential learning theory, and included simulation and video workshops, reflective diaries and didactic teaching. Actors were trained to portray patients living with dementia for the simulation exercises. Six courses were run between January and May 2017. 44/45 healthcare professionals attended both days of the course. Evaluation entailed: questionnaires on confidence in dementia communication; a dementia communication knowledge test; and participants' satisfaction. Video-recorded, simulated assessments were used to measure changes in communication behaviour.ResultsHealthcare professionals increased their knowledge of dementia communication (mean improvement 1.5/10; 95% confidence interval 1.0-2.0; p<0.001). Confidence in dementia communication also increased (mean improvement 5.5/45; 95% confidence interval 4.1-6.9; p<0.001) and the course was well-received. One month later participants reported using the skills learned in clinical practice. Blind-ratings of simulated patient encounters demonstrated behaviour change in taught communication behaviours to close an encounter, consistent with the training, but not in requesting behaviours.ConclusionWe have developed an innovative, evidence-based dementia communication skills training course which healthcare professionals found useful and after which they demonstrated improved dementia communication knowledge, confidence and behaviour.

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An online academic writing and publishing skills course: Help Syrians find their voice.

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