Educational needs of rural and remote Australian non-specialist medical practitioners for obstetric ultrasound.

Abstract

To determine the educational needs of rural and remote non-specialist Australian doctors for obstetric ultrasound. Survey design. The study surveyed rural and remote doctors practising in a variety of settings including general practice, rural hospitals, Aboriginal communities and flying doctor organisations throughout Australia. Subjects included 314 solo and group practice rural general practitioners, rural hospital medical superintendents, senior medical officers, Aboriginal community controlled health service doctors, flying doctors, rural locums, registrars and two rural obstetricians. A total of 55% of the subjects were general practitioners in group practice. Respondents included 68 (22%) women and 246 (78%) men. The response rate was 32%. The highest priority areas of need for education included detecting foetal abnormalities and anomalies (19.1%), basic routine ultrasonography (17.17%), placental position (17.17%), dating (17.17%), foetal viability (12.88%) and morphology scan (12.26%). The main areas where doctors stated they lacked confidence included detecting foetal abnormalities (29.09%), basic routine ultrasonography (including machine use), such as, carrying out and interpreting obstetric ultrasound scans (27.27%), morphology scans (16.36%) and placental position (14.54%). The study showed there was a large unmet need for education in obstetric ultrasound among rural and remote non-specialist doctors. Information from the needs assessment was used to develop the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine national obstetric ultrasound professional development program. The authors could not find any published work on the educational needs of Australian non-specialist rural and remote doctors for obstetric ultrasound. There is research about the outcome of obstetric ultrasound education for urban family physicians in the USA, but no information about rural doctors' educational needs or education outcomes. The study needed to be done so that obstetric ultrasound professional development program of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine could be based on the real needs of the target group. As a result of this research, there is now information on the educational needs of rural and remote Australian non-specialist medical practitioners that can be used by education providers to develop quality education programs in obstetric ultrasound.