Training family doctors and primary care nurses in evidence-based prevention, screening and management of cardiovascular risks in Western Ukraine: A longitudinal study

The Transcarpathian region is a mountainous area of western Ukraine which includes some remote and distant districts. Primary medical health care is provided by 662 FDs and by approximately 1,000 PCNs for the region’s population of 1.25 million people, about two-thirds of whom live rurally. All FDs and PCNs work at state-supported family medicine clinics, subordinated to local Primary Care Centres.

CME, in the form of a one-month academic course every five years, has been mandatory for FDs and PCNs wishing to confirm or upgrade their qualification category. These courses are conducted at the Postgraduate Faculty of the Uzhhorod National University (UzhNU), and are funded by the practitioners themselves, or by their Primary Care Centres (10). The courses have mainly been based on traditional didactic lectures, with the teaching provided by non-FD specialists. FDs from remote districts often work in solo practices without replacements available and thus cannot complete the full one-month training course. Shorter practical training sessions can, therefore, potentially become an alternative to the current system.

Our team at the UzhNU Family Medicine Training Centre organized an eight-hour practical training course on “Evidence-based steps for the prevention, screening and management of cardiovascular risks in FD’s practice”. We used a blended model of teaching with interactive pedagogical techniques that were developed from descriptions of similar programmes in other countries (22, 23). We held 20 identical training sessions for FDs and PCNs in the 12 districts of the Transcarpathian region during 2016-2017, and each participating FD and PCN attended a single session. PCNs were invited to the sessions to increase their understanding of their role in screening management, as we considered that they could be involved in counselling at-risk patients (smoking cessation, lifestyle changes, etc.), measurement of body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure (BP), glucose and cholesterol testing, and organizing follow-up appointments.

At the beginning of each training session we gave a short interactive introductory talk, aimed at increasing participants’ readiness to implement changes in their medical practice. To allow for multiple points of view, we then divided the participants into five small groups (usually with six participants in each). To ensure that each group could benefit from a wide range of skills and experience, the groups were made heterogeneous in terms of age, profession (FD/PCN) and experience. Trainers from our training centre (members of EURACT who were trained in, and had experience of, using interactive training methods for FDs) facilitated a series of four 45-minute workshops, leading discussions on the prevention, screening and management of cardiovascular diseases. The trainers encouraged the participants to express their thoughts and suggest solutions to perceived barriers. Every group rotated through each of the four workshops, with short breaks (5-15 minutes) in between. An overview of the modules is given in Table 1.

Module 1 (“Evidence-based approaches to effective counselling for patients with cardiovascular risks”) employed participant role-play. Participants were offered situational tasks, as close as possible to real life situations, which gave them the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills regarding effective counselling of patients with cardiovascular disease risks.

Module 2 (“Metabolic syndrome”) included a presentation of a simulated clinical case, with use of “brainstorming” and demonstrations of practical skills (determination of BMI, waist circumference, glucose measurement). An online resource for FDs that had been developed by the organizers, the “Primary Prevention and Screening Calculator”, was presented to the participants for use in their practice (26). This resource gives practitioners clear evidence-based algorithms for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, and advice on how to develop a cardiovascular disease screening plan.

Module 3 (“Rational statin therapy”) was conducted as a clinical case demonstration of evidence-based management of a patient with dyslipidemia in an FD’s practice. During this session the PCNs had an opportunity to get hands-on training in taking blood samples for lipid profile and glucose measurement.

Module 4 (“Essential hypertension and its complications”) was the final session, in which all participants brainstormed techniques and discussed clinical cases.

Participants completed two paper questionnaires in which they were asked to state their age, profession (FD or PCN), number of years in practice, and location of their practice (rural or urban). We assessed participants’ knowledge levels by using 20 multiple choice questions (MCQs) about the training topic, chosen by the course trainers from a bank of MCQs used for the certification of doctors and nurses (31). Each correctly answered question was given a score of 1 point, and a wrong answer scored no points, giving a possible range of 0-20 points. We categorized the results as ‘high’ or ‘low’ levels of knowledge, depending on whether individuals answered more than half of the questions correctly (≥11 points).

We assessed participants’ readiness to implement evidence-based prevention and screening with a five-item questionnaire (see Appendix 1). The items were adapted from an IDEA Health and Fitness Association questionnaire (27) and piloted by 20 FDs and 20 PCNs. No changes needed to be made as a result of the pilot. Respondents were asked to assess their levels of readiness to use evidence-based screening of cardio-vascular risks in their own clinical practice, using a five-point scale (ranging from 1, not ready/unmotivated, to 5, very ready/motivated). For each respondent, the sum of the five scores gave a total “readiness to change” score, giving a possible range of 5 to 25. Scores of ≥21 were categorized as “Very ready to change practice”.

We administered the questionnaires immediately before and after the training, as well as three months and one year after the training days. For the latter, we emailed the questionnaires to each of the regional departmental heads, who sent paper copies to the practitioners in their regions. The completed questionnaires were returned to us by post.

Participants’ baseline characteristics were analysed using percentages for categorical variables, with means and standard deviations (SD) for continuous variables. The scores for each round of questionnaires and the proportion of those who achieved high scores are presented as means with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Chi square tests were used to compare proportions, and t-tests to compare means. Statistical data were processed using Stata, version 15.1 IC (StataCorp LP, College Station, Texas).

In a training programme for FDs and PCNs in western Ukraine, the level of knowledge of evidence-based prevention, screening and management of cardiovascular risks increased substantially after a one-day interactive training course and, while it reduced in subsequent testing, remained significantly higher than baseline one year later. While the percentage of participants who were very ready to make changes to their clinical practice was significantly higher at all stages after the training, overall readiness-to-change scores had fallen back to near-baseline levels one year later.

This is the first report of interactive training for FDs andprimary care nurses in this region. The study included almost a third of all the FDs working in the Transcarpathian region. We were able to explore the effects of our training programme over twelve months of follow-up. While just over half of the training session participants completed the questionnaires, we did not have consent to collect data on the characteristics of those that did not complete these. The knowledge level questions were chosen by experienced FDs from a pre-existing MCQ question bank and therefore have face validity. The “readiness to change” questionnaire was piloted before use in the study. However, we did not assess the reliability of either questionnaire.

We also did not assess whether the programme had an impact on actual patient care. There was no comparison of the effect of the interactive training seminars with traditional Ukrainian medical teaching methods, such as didactic lectures. Moreover, it should be noted that other, unmeasured factors could have influenced participants’ knowledge and readiness to change during the year following their training seminars.

A Spanish study assessed the effect of an interactive course comprising four half-day sessions designed to develop the knowledge and skills required to practice evidence-based care (22). Similar to our study, it demonstrated a significant increase in participants’ knowledge. However, there was no follow-up beyond the questionnaire administered at the end of the course. In a study in China, a weekly face-to-face evidence-based medicine training course was found to increase knowledge and future anticipated use (24). Participants’ subsequent management of hypertension in the community was significantly better than that of a control group that had followed a self-instruction course instead. In a South African five-day interactive training programme for family physician clinical trainers, participants showed an increase in self-reported competencies three months after the course, but an objective assessment showed no change in their capabilities (25).

In a manual for motivational interview training, there are recommendations to assess participants’ levels of interest and confidence in their skills, their readiness to learn those skills, and their self-perceived skill levels (26), all of which were assessed in our interactive training programme. The majority of General Practitioners (GPs) consider evidence-based medicine to be a positive concept (32). However, barriers have been reported that limit its use (33, 34). Research showed that audits, feedback information and group discussion positively contributed to Dutch GPs’ motivation to change their practice (35).

An interactive teaching method for Ukrainian primary care clinicians resulted in an increase in their knowledge and readiness to change clinical practice, which was to a varying extent still present a year later. Barriers to changing practice identified by the participants included lack of time for motivational interviewing, low levels of patient motivation for lifestyle modification and limited access to screening investigations, especially in rural areas, and these may have limited the extent to which the participants’ own motivation increased.

While there was an immediate increase in the levels of motivation, this reduced over time, which may reflect the limited effect of the single, eight-hour intervention. More research is thus needed to find out whether the increased readiness to change results in real changes in clinical practice, and, if so, what those changes are. There is also a need to find out how, in the post-Soviet Eastern European countries, the increased readiness to change clinical practice can be sustained in the long term.