Learning and Satisfaction of the Workshops for pre and Postgraduates of Medicine for the Improvement in the Certification of the Causes of Death, 1992-1996

Abstract

Background: To broaden the experiences of evaluation of the learning and satisfaction of the workshops of pre and postgraduates of medicine for the improvement in the certification of the causes of death with contributions from the Region of Murcia, 1992-1996. Methods: With a quasi-experimental pre-posttest epidemiological design, a workshop is given, being both theoretical and practical of 2 hours addressed to students of medicine, interns in Family and Community Medicine and doctors in the course of obtaining said specialty. The goal of the workshop is to teach the usefulness of Mortality Statistics and the International WHO norms of certification. At start and finish we evaluated the formation by research, using indicators of formal quality, concept and result of the completion. Also, we administrate a questionnaire of satisfaction. Results: In 5 years 23 workshops with 646 assistents were given, including 472 pairs of exercises and 586 satisfaction’s questionnaires. In the pretest, more than 78% of the individual indicators were correct and 52.3% of the participants completed everything well. There were statistically significant improvements in the groups of indicators of concept and result, but not that of form, which showed a high qualification from the beginning (77.5%). The assignation of cause of death has improve more with the students (24.6%) than in physicians (14.4%). The contents of the course are very adequate/adequate (92.7%), without difference among the types of helpers. There is an equilibrium between theory and practice (64.7%). Eighty-one point three of physicians and 80.2% of the students stated that the workshop was useful for correctly certifying a death, independent of the previous background. Conclusions:The good initial qualifications were improved after the educational intervention. In accordance with workshops demonstrated efficacy, we propose their generalization and to follow its impact on Mortality Statistics.