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Abstract
Description Neonatal Tips is an online education resource that delivers daily microteaching through mobile e-learning technology with the aim of improving knowledge in neonatal medicine for paediatric trainees. The tips are short (less than 50 words) pieces of information relating to neonatal medicine, followed by a relevant reference hyperlink to a guideline or journal article. The level of information in the tips is aligned to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) level one curriculum (2010). Each tip is emailed out to subscribers, free of charge, daily from Monday to Friday, which they can read on their smart phone, tablet, personal computer, or any email facility. Subscribers are self-selecting, do so voluntarily and can cease participation at any time.
Aim To evaluate the effectiveness of the Neonatal Tips e-learning programme.
Neonatal Tips website screenshot
Methodology A service evaluation incorporating knowledge assessment by multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and participant evaluation questionnaire.
Setting Recruitment, consent, the e-learning programme, MCQs and questionnaire were all administered online.
Participants Participants were volunteer postgraduate paediatric specialty trainees who were either existing users of Neonatal Tips or recruited from the local deanery by email.
Main outcome measures Participants’ knowledge change and participants’ satisfaction.
Results In total, 1504 MCQ questions were completed over 11 weeks by 18 participants. Participants significantly improved their MCQ scores from pre- to post-tips (from 42% to 68% correct answers, p < 0.001). All participants wanted Neonatal Tips to continue for their learning. 63% of participants answered that Neonatal Tips was “extremely useful” and 85% answered that receiving tips by email was either “valuable” or “very valuable”.
Conclusion Neonatal Tips is a novel convenient method of delivering teaching to busy postgraduate trainees. It is effective in improving short-term knowledge, is useful in signposting participants to further relevant reading and has high user satisfaction. Further evaluation is required to assess longer-term knowledge retention. Research is needed to compare the effectiveness and acceptability of this new format with existing e-learning programmes and standard teaching.