Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the perceived educational needs and preferences of primary care providers for training and education in dementia within an online environment.

Design: A prospective, qualitative research study.

Method: Participants were primary care providers purposively recruited currently licensed to practice in Ontario possessed a patient population with dementia, and willing to attend a focus group session and for one to one interview. A deductive content/thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. A total of 19 participants took part in the study across four focus groups (n=15) and four individual interviews (n=4).

Results: The study found that notion of credibility of information is critical to the learning process and highly valued by physicians. Credibility appears to overlap across the two constructs and the importance of credibility seems to link notions of perceived behaviour control with physicians’ subjective norms. Participants expressed an educational need for decision support, referring to learning that can support their ability to make clinical decisions. Participants expressed the value of educational tools such as technology resources, an online “evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource and so on. They also wanted to use other decision-making tools.

Conclusion: In conclusion, primary care providers have educational needs which may pose as facilitators and/or barriers to physician learning, eLearning and continuing medical education.