TeleEducation for Implementing a Clinical Practice Guideline For Amputees

Overview

The publication of a Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) is often not enough for its correct use in the field of health care. There are barriers to the implementation of the CPG recommendations, including those related to the lack of knowledge or skills on the part of health service providers. Strategies have been proposed to improve the implementation of the CPGs through interventions with different levels of effectiveness, such as the use of reminders, informative meetings, sending educational material, audits, among others. Some of these interventions can be carried out through Telehealth strategies, that is, with remote services. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a Telehealth program to improve the implementation of the Clinical Practice Guideline for diagnosis and preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative treatment of the amputee, the prescription of the prosthesis and comprehensive rehabilitation, through strategies to publicize the recommendations included in the CPG and train doctors, reducing the barriers related to the lack of knowledge of the CPG. For this, two groups of institutions that provide health services in Antioquia will be compared, randomized according to two interventions: the socialization of the recommendations of the CPG for amputees, against a combined strategy of education through a Telehealth platform and the delivery of educational material. Compliance with prioritized recommendations of the CPG will be evaluated, related to surgical techniques, perioperative practices, the prescription of prosthetic components and referral to services that allow the comprehensive rehabilitation of the person with amputation. Additionally, the theoretical knowledge of the doctors of each participating institution before and after the interventions will be evaluated through a written test.

The effectiveness of the educational program based on telehealth tools (TeleEducation: virtual course with recommendations from the CPG of lower limb amputees, at least four modules: Orthopedics, surgery, rehabilitation and prostheses; TeleAssistance: virtual conference between CPG researchers and professional from selected hospitals and delivery of educational material containing the recommendations of the CPG) compared to the usual socialization of the CPG in an informative meeting to the health personnel of the institutions, will be evaluated by means of a generalized estimated equation model (GEE) for dichotomous variables using the binomial distribution and logit as a link function since the outcomes that will be used will be handled with two coded response options 1 = satisfy 0 = does not satisfy and given the design of conglomerates where the measurements would be correlated. The investigators are expecting to improve the implementation of the CPG be at least 15% higher than compare the intervention group with the control group. The effectiveness of a telehealth based strategy is expected to improve the Implementation of the Clinical Practice Guide for diagnosis and preoperative treatment, intraoperative and postoperative period of the amputated person, the prescription of the prosthesis and the comprehensive rehabilitation in health institutions in Antioquia, Colombia, be at least 15% higher than compare the intervention group with the control group.