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Education
Original article
Educational needs of health professionals working in rheumatology in Europe
  1. Theodora P M Vliet Vlieland1,
  2. Cornelia H.M van den Ende2,
  3. Francoise Alliot-Launois3,
  4. Catherine Beauvais4,
  5. Milena Gobbo5,
  6. Annamaria Iagnocco6,
  7. Ingrid E Lundberg7,
  8. Pedro V Munuera-Martínez8,
  9. Christina H Opava9,10,
  10. Yeliz Prior11,12,
  11. Anthony Redmond13,14,
  12. Hana Smucrova15 and
  13. Dieter Wiek16
  1. 1Department of Orthopaedics, Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
  2. 2Department of Rheumatology, Sint Maartenskliniek, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  3. 3Department of Rehabilitation, Siege Assistance Publique, Paris, France
  4. 4Department of Rheumatology, Saint Antoine Hospital, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France
  5. 5Positivamente Psicólogos, Madrid, Spain
  6. 6Rheumatology Unit, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy
  7. 7Rheumatology Unit, Department of Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
  8. 8Department of Podiatry, University of Seville, Seville, Spain
  9. 9Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Division of Physiotherapy, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, Sweden
  10. 10Rheumatology Unit, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
  11. 11Centre for Health Sciences Research, University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK
  12. 12East Cheshire NHS Trust, Leighton Hospital, UK
  13. 13Department of Clinical Biomechanics and Physical Medicine, Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine, Leeds, UK
  14. 14Leeds NIHR Biomedical Research Unit, Leeds, UK
  15. 15Department of Rehabilitation, Institute of Rheumatology, Prague, Czech Republic
  16. 16Deutsche Rheuma-Liga Bundesverband, Bonn, Germany
  1. Correspondence to Professor Theodora P M Vliet Vlieland; t.p.m.vliet_vlieland{at}lumc.nl

Abstract

Objective To explore the availability of postgraduate education for health professionals (HPs) working in rheumatology in Europe, and their perceived educational needs and barriers for participation in current educational offerings.

Methods Structured interviews were conducted with national representatives of rheumatology HPs' organisations and an online survey among individual HPs was disseminated through existing European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) networks (10 languages including English). These comprised questions on: availability of postgraduate education, familiarity with EULAR and its educational offerings, unmet needs regarding the contents and mode of delivery and potential barriers to participate in education (0–10 scales).

Results According to 17 national representatives, postgraduate rheumatology education was most common for nurses, physical and occupational therapists. There were 1041 individuals responding to the survey, of whom 48% completed all questions. More than half (56%) were familiar with EULAR as an organisation, whereas <25% had attended the EULAR congress or were familiar with EULAR online courses. Educational needs regarding contents were highest for ‘inflammatory arthritis’ and ‘connective tissue diseases’ and regarding modes of delivery for ‘courses organised in own country’ and ‘online courses’. Important barriers to participation included lack of ‘resources’, ‘time’ and ‘English language skills’. Overall, there was considerable variation in needs and barriers among countries.

Conclusions There is a lack of postgraduate rheumatology education for HPs in most countries. There are opportunities to raise awareness regarding EULAR educational offerings and to develop courses provided in HPs' own country, tailored to national needs and barriers and taking language barriers into consideration.

  • Health services research
  • Occupational therapy
  • Nursing
  • Multidisciplinary team-care

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/rmdopen-2016-000337

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors CB, MG, PVM-M, YP, HS and DW were involved in the translations and the distribution of the survey. TPMVV and CHMvdE performed the data analysis and wrote the manuscript. All authors were involved in the study design. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

    • Funding EULAR financially supported a meeting of the authors with the aim of developing the study protocol and the survey.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval The survey employed in this study concerned a once-only and anonymous electronic questionnaire for health professionals. Since they were fully free to either respond or not, no ethical approval was needed. The interview data could not be gathered anonymously; these are, however, reported in such a way that the information cannot be connected to a specific country or person. The study was conducted in accordance with the guidelines for Good Research Practice of the WHO (WHO (2002). Handbook for good clinical research practice (GCP) Guidance for implementation. http:/apps.who.int/prequal/info_general/documents/GCP/gcp1.pdf).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement Raw data from this study are available through the corresponding author.