A web-based Alcohol Clinical Training (ACT) curriculum: is in-person faculty development necessary to affect teaching?
BACKGROUND
Physicians receive little education about unhealthy alcohol use and as a result patients often do not receive efficacious interventions. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether a free web-based alcohol curriculum would be used by physician educators and whether in-person faculty development would increase its use, confidence in teaching and teaching itself.


METHODS
Subjects were physician educators who applied to attend a workshop on the use of a web-based curriculum about alcohol screening and brief intervention and cross-cultural efficacy. All physicians were provided the curriculum web address. Intervention subjects attended a 3-hour workshop including demonstration of the website, modeling of teaching, and development of a plan for using the curriculum. All subjects completed a survey prior to and 3 months after the workshop.


RESULTS
Of 20 intervention and 13 control subjects, 19 (95%) and 10 (77%), respectively, completed follow-up. Compared to controls, intervention subjects had greater increases in confidence in teaching alcohol screening, and in the frequency of two teaching practices - teaching about screening and eliciting patient health beliefs. Teaching confidence and teaching practices improved significantly in 9 of 10 comparisons for intervention, and in 0 comparisons for control subjects. At follow-up 79% of intervention but only 50% of control subjects reported using any part of the curriculum (p = 0.20).


CONCLUSIONS
In-person training for physician educators on the use of a web-based alcohol curriculum can increase teaching confidence and practices. Although the web is frequently used for dissemination, in-person training may be preferable to effect widespread teaching of clinical skills like alcohol screening and brief intervention.
Alford
Daniel P
DP
Clinical Addiction Research and Education (CARE) Unit, Section of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA. dalford@bu.edu
Richardson
Jessica M
JM
Chapman
Sheila E
SE
Dubé
Catherine E
CE
Schadt
Robert W
RW
Saitz
Richard
R
D000437:Alcoholism / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000517:prevention & control*; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003479:Curriculum; D003625:Data Collection; D004493:Education; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing / Q000379:methods*; D005180:Faculty, Medical; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008403:Mass Screening; D017145:Models, Educational; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011446:Prospective Studies; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*