Abstract
BackgroundThe rapid spread of personalized medicine requires professionals to manage the “omics revolution.” Therefore, the genetics/genomics literacy of healthcare professionals should be in line with the continuous advances in this field, in order to implement its potential implications for diagnosis, control and treatment of diseases. The present study investigates the effectiveness of a distance learning course on genetics and genomics targeted at medical doctors.MethodsIn the context of a project funded by the Italian Ministry of Health, we developed a distance learning course, entitled Genetics and Genomics practice. The course focused on genetic/genomics testing, pharmacogenetics and oncogenomics and was developed according to andragogical training methods (Problem-based Learning and Case-based Learning). We used a pre-test vs. post-test study design to assess knowledge improvement on a set of 10 Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs). We analyzed the proportion of correct answers for each question pre and post-test and the mean score difference stratified by gender, age, professional status and medical discipline. Moreover, the test was submitted to the participants 8 months after the conclusion of the course (follow-up), in order to assess the retained knowledge.ResultsThe course was completed by 1,637 Italian physicians, most of which were primary care physicians (20.8%), public health professionals (11.5%) and specialist pediatricians (10.6%). The proportion of correct answers increased in the post-test for all the MCQs. The overall mean score significantly increased, from 59.46 in the pre-test to 71.42 in the post-test (p < 0.0001). The comparison in test performance between follow-up and pre-test demonstrated an overall knowledge improvement.ConclusionGenomics literacy among healthcare professionals is essential to ensure optimal translation to healthcare delivery of research. The results of this course suggest that distance-learning training in genetic/genomics practice represents an effective method to improve physicians’ knowledge in the immediate and mid-term time scale. A preprint version of this paper is available at: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-10083/v1.
Highlights
The last two decades were characterized by a “genetic revolution” that has given rise to the “omics sciences era” as a consequence of the spread of high-throughput investigation techniques, capable of generating enormous amounts of data related to the different hierarchical levels of biological complexity (DNA, mRNA, proteins, metabolites, etc.) (Schneider and Orchard, 2011)
The rapid spread of this new knowledge requires healthcare professionals to manage the possible application of the omics sciences, ranging from medical research advances to use in screening, diagnosis and prognosis of different pathologies (Anderson and Schrijver, 2010; Muntoni and Cross, 2015)
Our study presents the project aimed at developing a distance learning course in genetics and genomics targeted at medical professionals and at evaluating its effectiveness in terms of knowledge improvement of participants after the course, and 8 months after its closing
Summary
The last two decades were characterized by a “genetic revolution” that has given rise to the “omics sciences era” as a consequence of the spread of high-throughput investigation techniques, capable of generating enormous amounts of data related to the different hierarchical levels of biological complexity (DNA, mRNA, proteins, metabolites, etc.) (Schneider and Orchard, 2011).The rapid spread of this new knowledge requires healthcare professionals to manage the possible application of the omics sciences, ranging from medical research advances to use in screening, diagnosis and prognosis of different pathologies (Anderson and Schrijver, 2010; Muntoni and Cross, 2015).While several European countries implemented dedicated health policies in this area (Boccia et al, 2015), few countries have integrated Public Health Genomics in their healthcare offer (Mazzucco et al, 2017), such as Italy where personalized medicine was included in the National Prevention Plans since 2010 (Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces, 2013; Boccia, 2014; Boccia et al, 2014).More recently, the “Italian National Plan for innovation of the Health System based on omics sciences” identified the educational efforts toward professionals, citizens and decision makers as a cornerstone for a proper implementation of omics sciences in healthcare (Boccia et al, 2017). The rapid spread of this new knowledge requires healthcare professionals to manage the possible application of the omics sciences, ranging from medical research advances to use in screening, diagnosis and prognosis of different pathologies (Anderson and Schrijver, 2010; Muntoni and Cross, 2015). With the purpose of training medical professionals in the responsible use of omics technologies, a distance learning method was chosen. In recent years this method has increasingly become part of medical education programs and, besides allowing to reach a high number of learners, has shown to be effective in the context of CME (Vaona et al, 2018). The present study investigates the effectiveness of a distance learning course on genetics and genomics targeted at medical doctors
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