Can an inter-professional education tool improve health care professional confidence, knowledge and quality of inpatient diabetes care?
This was a pilot study (Herring et al 2013) to evaluate an interprofessional education tool designed to improve health care professional confidence, knowledge and quality of inpatient diabetes care. Diabetes specialists designed an education tool for use in the hospital environment to educate qualified pharmacists, nurses, health care assistants and junior doctors. The interprofessional learning enabled professionals to learn from and about each other. The education tool was piloted at four hospitals. Diabetes specialists delivered the education programme to 31 health care professionals over eight hours either as three individual teaching blocks or a whole day. Health care professionals completed a multiple choice questionnaire before and after the education intervention to evaluate acquisition of knowledge; confidence was evaluated using categorical questions, and diabetes specialists used a clinical audit form before and after the education programme to evaluate the quality of diabetes care.
Significant improvements were found in knowledge and confidence, reduction in management errors and improvement in appropriate blood glucose monitoring. Improvement in the number of appropriate diabetes referrals and reduction in prescribing errors did not reach statistical significance. They concluded the education tool improved health care professional confidence and knowledge and may improve the quality of inpatient diabetes care.
