Development and validation of an information literacy self-efficacy scale for medical students

The aim of this research is to develop and validate a scale for the evaluation of medical students’ information literacy self-efficacy beliefs, as this plays a crucial role in the development of lifelong learning objectives. Curriculum developers and medical educators need to have a good understanding of information literacy in order to decide when specific support and training should be integrated in the curricula. The use of a trustworthy, user-friendly tool in a large population able to detect different aspects of students’ information literacy self-efficacy beliefs could help to evaluate an entire curriculum. A 5-factor model was developed and validated within a 6-year medical curriculum (n=1252). Internal consistency of the subscales was high (α: 0.845-0.930). In conclusion, the Information Literacy Self-Efficacy Scale for Medicine (ILSES-M) could be an added value for evaluating medical students’ information literacy self-efficacy beliefs. Furthermore, it could form the basis for curriculum development as well as a guideline for critical curriculum reflection

Information literacy in health sciences education: proposal of a new model in a multi-perspectivism setting

Information literacy (IL) has become a core skill within health sciences education. Curriculum developers invest a lot of energy in the development of curricula to integrate IL training in an effective way. To optimize this implementation, a new IL model for health sciences education in a multi-perspectivism setting is proposed. Information literacy should be integrated and practiced within a complete curriculum by using horizontal (basic IL skills) and vertical integration (IL integrated within the discipline) that would guarantee equal opportunities for students’ IL development and which could be a more cost-effective solution within curriculum development. The emerging technologies and the impact on educational models will more and more demand different expertise and thus collaboration of experts with different backgrounds

Patient and provider acceptance of telecoaching in type 2 diabetes : a mixed-method study embedded in a randomised clinical trial

Background: Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment of type 2 diabetes, suboptimal metabolic control persists. Patient education in diabetes has been proved to enhance self-efficacy and guideline-driven treatment, however many people with type 2 diabetes do not have access to or do not participate in self-management support programmes. Tele-education and telecoaching have the potential to improve accessibility and efficiency of care, but there is a slow uptake in Europe. Patient and provider acceptance in a local context is an important precondition for implementation. The aim of the study was to explore the perceptions of patients, nurses and general practitioners (GPs) regarding telecoaching in type 2 diabetes. Methods: Mixed-method study embedded in a clinical trial, in which a nurse-led target-driven telecoaching programme consisting of 5 monthly telephone sessions of +/- 30 min was offered to 287 people with type 2 diabetes in Belgian primary care. Intervention attendance and satisfaction about the programme were analysed along with qualitative data obtained during post-trial semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of patients, general practitioners (GPs) and nurses. The perceptions of patients and care providers about the intervention were coded and the themes interpreted as barriers or facilitators for adoption. Results: Of 252 patients available for a follow-up analysis, 97.5 % reported being satisfied. Interviews were held with 16 patients, 17 general practitioners (GPs) and all nurses involved (n = 6). Themes associated with adoption facilitation were: 1) improved diabetes control; 2) need for more tailored patient education programmes offered from the moment of diagnosis; 3) comfort and flexibility; 4) evidence-based nature of the programme; 5) established cooperation between GPs and diabetes educators; and 6) efficiency gains. Most potential barriers were derived from the provider views: 1) poor patient motivation and suboptimal compliance with "faceless" advice; 2) GPs' reluctance in the area of patient referral and information sharing; 3) lack of legal, organisational and financial framework for telecare. Conclusions: Nurse-led telecoaching of people with type 2 diabetes was well-accepted by patients and providers, with providers being in general more critical in their reflections. With increasing patient demand for mobile and remote services in healthcare,the findings of this study should support professionals involved in healthcare policy and innovation

Main characteristics of type 1 and type 2 diabetes patients interested in the use of a telemonitoring platform

Diabetes is one of the most challenging health problems of the 21st century. Using a telemonitoring platform could be beneficiary for persons with this condition. Such a platform could enhance the electronic communication between different actors in a private and secure way. Patients could receive timely (personalised) feedback; less transcription errors could occur and a higher reliability of direct transfer of blood glucose data into the system could be the result. Until now, it has however never been investigated whether those persons are actually interested in using such a platform. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate whether diabetes patients are interested in using a telemonitoring platform and if so, whether characteristics of interested users could be distinguished. Because no questionnaire existed to assess this interest, a Telemonitoring Health Effect and Readiness Questionnaire (THERQ) was developed and validated (Chapter 3). The preliminary findings suggest it is a valid, reliable, brief and easy to administer scale. In 2008, quite some patients were interested in the use of some services offered via a telemonitoring platform. In 2011, there was even a growing interest. Currently, patients recruited via a Community Health Centre (study 2011) do not use any electronic form (e.g. email) to communicate with their healthcare professional. However, also in this group of patients, about 40 percent of the patients was interested in using it. While the interest in 2008 especially was for using such a platform for communication from the home environment with their healthcare professional, in 2011 there was quite some interest in using such a platform during holidays. Even though these results cannot be compared with other studies, they seem promising. Another important question in this study was to look for characteristics of interested users of a telemonitoring platform. Because some telemonitoring studies already showed a link with empowerment, one of the aims of this study was to look for a link between empowerment and interest in the use of a telemonitoring platform. No Dutch version of the Diabetes Empowerment Scale (DES) existed, so the DES was translated into Dutch and the psychometric properties determined (Dutch-DES-20) (Chapter 4). The preliminary results suggest the Dutch-DES-20 is a valid and reliable instrument. To determine criterion validity, it was hypothesised that patients with high empowerment scores would have better metabolic control, thus lower HbA1c-levels. This study showed that patients with an insulin treatment and a better metabolic control were indeed more empowered. Also, patients being able to cope well and with good motivation (subscale 2) were more empowered, irrespective of the group. It was further hypothesised that patients with high empowerment scores also would have high scores on the Dutch-DES sub-questions. Indeed, patients on multiple daily insulin injections with high empowerment scores have a high self-rated understanding of diabetes and its treatment, feel themselves able to fit diabetes into their life in a positive manner and feel themselves capable to ask questions to their diabetes professional. Even though it was expected that diabetes would not prevent empowered diabetes patients from doing their normal daily activity, no significant correlations could be found. The interviews learned it was a quite difficult question to answer. Patients mentioned that it was not obvious to reflect on a life without diabetes while having it already for quite some time. In our sample, more than two thirds was already diagnosed for more than ten years. In Chapter 5, characteristics of interested users were described. The study in 2008 was performed in a hospital setting, while in the study performed in 2011, patients were recruited via a Community Health Centre (primary care setting), via the Flemish Diabetes Centre and via an online questionnaire. The most important results were found for patients with only insulin treatment and those with a combined treatment; interesting groups also from a clinical point of view. For those patients it was found, as expected, that younger patients, patients using a computer or searching on the Internet (making use of a forum or searching for diabetes-related information), and those already keeping data on computer are more interested in using a telemonitoring platform. In 2011, the use of a smartphone and the use of social media seemed to be very important characteristics as well. It was further found that patients with only an insulin treatment without adequate metabolic control seem to be more prone to use the telemonitoring platform. From a clinical point of view, having an adequate metabolic control is important, i.e. to diminish the risk to develop chronic complications. The present results suggest a link between eagerness to use a platform and those in need for a better control. For patients with a combined treatment regimen, a link was found with empowerment; i.e. those with lower empowerment scores seem to be more prone to use a telemonitoring platform. Even though further research is required, it could be hypothesised that this group of patients is entering a new stage in their disease and thus need to adapt their lifestyle to this new situation. CONCLUSION : The preliminary results of this study show that the Dutch Diabetes Empowerment Scale (Dutch-DES-20) as well as the Telemonitoring Health Effect and Readiness Questionnaire (THERQ) are valid and reliable instruments. The results further show that there is substantial growing interest in using a telemonitoring platform. For type 1 and type 2 diabetes patients with only insulin treatment it could be used to improve their metabolic control; for type 2 diabetes patients with a combined treatment regimen to improve empowerment. The selection of patients could be based on present Internet use, use of social media and on the fact they already log diabetes data

Webgebaseerde diabeteseducatie, iets voor u?

Het internet heeft in een korte tijd een belangrijke invloed op ons leven gekregen. Eén van de mogelijkheden die het biedt is telemonitoring en meer specifiek: webgebaseerde diabeteseducati

Progress testing of information literacy versus information literacy self-efficacy in medical students

Introduction: Progress testing (PT) is a common assessment tool within medical schools. Since many years PT has become a familiar way of assessing students at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Ghent University. In this context, the researchers have introduced a PT on information literacy (PTIL). Besides answering an item right or wrong, it is also important to analyze students information literacy self-efficacy (ILSE). Methods: Two independent researchers mapped every PTIL-item to one of the 28-items of the self-efficacy (SE) scale developed by Kurbanoglu (2006). Because of the medical context and the impact on the students’ IL the researchers added 10 SE-items to the original scale. In 2012 all medical students ( n=1180) administered the PTIL and ILSE questionnaire. To evaluate the quality of the question and the mapping with the SE-item, item analysis of MCQs has been executed using SPSS (v22). Furthermore, MWU-tests were performed between each PTIL-item and the mapped Self-Efficacy-item with alpha=0.05. Results and discussion: Two items had an item difficulty ≤0.2 and four items did not match the curriculum end terms anymore and were left out for further analysis. Even though it is expected that a progressive proportion of answers will be right (Vantini 2008), it has been found that for 6 items more students in the first years answered the items significantly more correct compared to those in the last years. Generally, looking at the mapping of ILSE and PTIL, for 7 items significant higher SE-values were found for those answering the PTIL-item correctly. Surprisingly, especially in Y1 significant differences have been found: higher SE-values has been found for 3 correct answered items and lower SE-values has been found for 4 incorrect answered questions. For one item, a correct answer corresponds with lower SE-values. Analyzing this PTIL-item, we can possibly conclude that students deducted the right answer. Until now, research into the relationship between ILSE and academic performance within a medical context has however been unable to show any relationship (Sattar Khan 2013). Future research should however focus on further validation of the PTIL in relation with ILSE. Future research should however focus on further validation of the PTIL in relation with ILSE. In June 2014, a new elaborated PTIL will be assessed taking into account actual results and the actual curriculum end terms. Simultaneously, an adapted SE-scale for medical context will be developed and further tested. References Kurbanoglu, S.S., Akkoyunlu, B., Umay, A. (2006). Developing the information literacy self-efficacy scale. Journal of Documentation, 62(6), 730-743. Sattar Khan, A., Cansever, Z., Avsar, Z. A., Acemoglu, H. (2013). Perceived Self-Efficacy and Academic Performance of Medical Students at Ataturk University, Turkey. Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, 23(7), 495-498. Vantini, I., Benini, L. (2008). Models of learning, training and progress evaluation of medical students. Clinica Chimica Acta, 393, 13-16