Objective To investigate the feedback of continuing medical education (CME) based on short message service (SMS) for village doctors in Gaolan County of Gansu Province, and to explore how to improve the efficiency of CME based on SMS.
Methods A total of 75 village doctors were investigated with a questionnaire when attending the training program conducted by the Health Bureau of Gaolan County.
Results A total of 75 valid questionnaires were collected back. The statistical analyses showed that 56% of the doctors received the majority of the messages sent to them, of whom, 98% could read the messages promptly, 81% saved the majority of the messages they received, 98% could read the saved massages occasionally, 25% transmitted messages to others, 93% thought that the messages might be helpful in varying degrees, 96% would like to continue receiving the messages in the future, 51% thought the biggest shortcoming of the messages was the poor relevance to their concern, and 70% wanted the most to receive short messages about clinical diagnosis and treatment. At present, 39% of the doctors thought the most convenient approaches to get the updated medical knowledge are attending the study or training program organized by higher authorities, while 37% thought those are reading short messages on the mobile, websites or papers.
Conclusion The village doctors are willing to receive the short messages about the best clinical evidence. However, both the receiving rate and use rate of the short messages have yet to improve. A complete SMS transmission system and highly-relevant contents are regarded as important guarantees for improving the receiving rate and use rate.
Citation： XIAO Xiaojuan,WANG Zehao,ZHAO Yangyang,YAO Liang,YANG Kehu,GUO Yimin,CHEN Yaolong. A Survey on the Continuing Medical Education Based on Short Message Service for Village Doctors in Gaolan County. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2011, 11(3): 261-264. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.20110044 Copy