The mCME Project:Delivering Continuing Medical Education for Community Health Workers Via SMS Text Messages (mCME project)
January 11, 2016 updated by: Christopher J. Gill, Boston University
Community health workers (CHWs) provide essential basic medical care to hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
CHWs offer a myriad of services including community sanitation, breast feeding counseling, family planning, management of febrile children, and malaria control and prevention, to name but a few.
In fact, CHWs are often the only source of primary health care available to some of the most disadvantaged populations in the world.
However, to be effective, CHWs must be trained - and retrained - at regular intervals, and the costs for such trainings can be substantial.
In the US, clinicians are required to stay current and maintain their competence through continuing medical education (CME).
Increasingly, CME activities are delivered via internet-based, self-teaching modules.
A typical example would be a set of topical readings followed by multiple-choice questions, with the answers, and CME credit, provided to the user upon satisfactory completion of the module.
This content is typically delivered over the Internet.
However, there is no intrinsic reason why this approach could not be adapted so that CME activities are delivered using standard cell phones via SMS text messaging.
This would significantly expand professional training opportunities to a far greater range of CHWs than possible through computer/tablet/smart phone platforms, and would be particularly valuable in poorer countries with limited training budgets.
In the mCME project, the investigators propose to test the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of a mobile phone-based CME delivery strategy among Vietnamese community-based physician assistants (CBPAs), a cadre of CHW mandated to provide primary health care to rural and disadvantaged populations.
The investigators hypothesize that providing CME activities over a mobile platform will significantly improve their professional knowledge, and may also improve their job satisfaction and self-efficacy.
Study Overview
Status
Completed
Conditions
Study Type
Interventional
Enrollment (Actual)
638
Phase
- Not Applicable
Participation Criteria
Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.
Eligibility Criteria
Ages Eligible for Study
18 years to 99 years (Adult, Older Adult)
Accepts Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Genders Eligible for Study
All
Description
Inclusion Criteria:
- Graduated from a CBPA training program
- Possesses their own cell phone
- Phone able to send/receive text messages
- Aged 18 years or older
Exclusion Criteria:
- Unwilling to sign informed consent
- Lives/operates in an area without cellular coverage
- Unwilling to be randomized
- Unwilling to adhere to study procedures
Study Plan
This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.
How is the study designed?
Design Details
- Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
- Allocation: Randomized
- Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
- Masking: None (Open Label)
Arms and Interventions
Participant Group / Arm |
Intervention / Treatment |
|---|---|
|
No Intervention: Group 1
Weekly non-medical SMS messages
|
|
|
Experimental: Group 2
Receipt of a daily SMS text message describing various aspects of clinical practice
|
Group 2 subjects receive a daily SMS bullet point, summarizing a key clinical point pertinent to the CBPA's daily work.
Other Names:
|
|
Experimental: Group 3
Receipt of a daily SMS text message describing various aspects of clinical practice, but phrased as multiple choice question
|
Group 3 subjects receive a c phrased as a multiple choice question.
The content mirrors that of group 2, but is presented as a question to render it interactive
Other Names:
|
What is the study measuring?
Primary Outcome Measures
Outcome Measure |
Measure Description |
Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
|
Medical knowledge (Score on medical knowledge exams)
Time Frame: 6 months
|
Score on medical knowledge exams administered at baseline and at the end of six months of the intervention
|
6 months
|
Secondary Outcome Measures
Outcome Measure |
Measure Description |
Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
|
Job satisfaction (Score on likert scale)
Time Frame: 6 months
|
Score on likert scale measuring job satisfaction
|
6 months
|
|
Self efficacy (Score in likert scale)
Time Frame: 6 months
|
Score in likert scale measuring self efficacy
|
6 months
|
Other Outcome Measures
Outcome Measure |
Measure Description |
Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
|
cost effectiveness analysis of the mCME intervention in terms of costs to increase a study test score by X %
Time Frame: Duration of project
|
costs and cost effectiveness analysis of the mCME intervention in terms of costs to increase a study test score by X %
|
Duration of project
|
Collaborators and Investigators
This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.
Sponsor
Investigators
- Principal Investigator: Christopher J Gill, MD MS, Boston University
Publications and helpful links
The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.
General Publications
- Larson Williams A, Hawkins A, Sabin L, Halim N, Le Ngoc B, Nguyen VH, Nguyen T, Bonawitz R, Gill C. Motivating HIV Providers in Vietnam to Learn: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of a Mobile Health Continuing Medical Education Intervention. JMIR Med Educ. 2019 Apr 18;5(1):e12058. doi: 10.2196/12058.
- Gill CJ, Le NB, Halim N, Chi CTH, Nguyen VH, Bonawitz R, Hoang PV, Nguyen HL, Huong PTT, Larson Williams A, Le NA, Sabin L. mCME project V.2.0: randomised controlled trial of a revised SMS-based continuing medical education intervention among HIV clinicians in Vietnam. BMJ Glob Health. 2018 Feb 26;3(1):e000632. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2017-000632. eCollection 2018.
- Gill CJ, Le Ngoc B, Halim N, Nguyen Viet H, Larson Williams A, Nguyen Van T, McNabb M, Tran Thi Ngoc L, Falconer A, An Phan Ha H, Rohr J, Hoang H, Michiel J, Nguyen Thi Thanh T, Bird L, Pham Vu H, Yeshitla M, Ha Van N, Sabin L. The mCME Project: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an SMS-Based Continuing Medical Education Intervention for Improving Medical Knowledge among Vietnamese Community Based Physicians' Assistants. PLoS One. 2016 Nov 18;11(11):e0166293. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166293. eCollection 2016.
Study record dates
These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.
Study Major Dates
Study Start
May 1, 2015
Primary Completion (Actual)
November 1, 2015
Study Completion (Actual)
November 1, 2015
Study Registration Dates
First Submitted
March 3, 2015
First Submitted That Met QC Criteria
March 5, 2015
First Posted (Estimate)
March 6, 2015
Study Record Updates
Last Update Posted (Estimate)
January 12, 2016
Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria
January 11, 2016
Last Verified
January 1, 2016
More Information
Terms related to this study
Other Study ID Numbers
- H-33241
This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.