What are the pedagogical modalities preferred by community pharmacists for their continuing professional education?
Résumé
Background information: Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is necessary to maintain and update knowledge and skills and thus improve professional practice and quality of patient care. In France, CPD is a legal and triennial obligation for all practicing health professionals. They must follow a set of accredited training courses including at least 2 of the following 3 actions: acquisition of knowledge, evaluation of professional practices and risk management. Continuing education organizations must follow the recommendations of the Haute Autorité de Santé, which are based on 19 teaching methods. In practice, e-learning is a training vector widely offered by private organizations and universities. We also note the emergence of new proposals on mobile applications or social networks. Purpose: The main objective of the survey is to determine the preferences of the community pharmacists (CPs) on the pedagogical modalities for CPD. Method: This is a study based on a Best-Worst Scaling type questionnaire. Ten pedagogical methods were selected from the French recommendations and the International Pharmaceutical Federation publications. A total of 15 different choice tests were submitted to the participants, for which they had to choose among 4 teaching methods which was the best and the worst for them. A multinomial logistic regression was performed to estimate the weight of preferences. Results: A total of 118 community pharmacists, including 72 (61.0%) women and 58 (49.2%) owner CPs responded. The average age of respondents is 42.1 (Me = 42; Min = 24, Max = 66). Moreover, 1695 choice tests could be analysed. The most preferred pedagogical modalities are face-to-face multiprofessional (b = 0.25; 95% CI [0.18 - 0.32]), mixed multiprofessional (b = 0.23; 95% CI [0.16 - 0.30]) and multiprofessional problem-based learning (b = 0.18; 95% CI [0.11 - 0.25]). The less preferred pedagogical modalities are podcasting / E-learning (b = -0.08; 95% CI [-0.15 - -0.02]), simulation (b = -0.17; 95% CI [-0 .24 - -0.10]) and the web application (b = -0.32; 95% CI [-0.38 - -0.25]). Conclusion: The participants show a strong interest in multiprofessional CPD. This is probably due to the current reorganization of primary care in France around interprofessional collaboration structures. The preferences reflect the training offer of the French universities that mainly offer face-to-face or mixed courses associated with asynchronous learning and face-to-face seminars. It also reveals a possible desirability bias of the participants in relation to the researchers who are identified as academics. Surprisingly, strict e-learning and web applications are not very popular, while the first one is the most encountered in the private CPD offer and the second one is very promising to attract new audiences. Mentoring does not elicit enthusiasm or rejection. It is probably little known by CPs but it is of major interest for the academics who wish to develop professional practices in the field. Further work is needed to ensure that pharmacists' preferences are taken into account to develop CPD programs and to encourage participation. A possible perspective would be to develop mixed CPD programs, involving modalities other than the classic mixed courses associated with asynchronous learning.