EDUCATIONAL NEEDS ASSESSMENT 2018
Dear ESICM members and (non-member) friends,
We would like to thank you for your contribution to our educational needs assessment survey. We had an excellent response with over 475 individuals responding to the survey.
Most of you who responded to our survey are working clinically on the ICU (94%), are doctors working in intensive care (75%) with a vast spread of experience. We had high response rates from UK, Italy, Portugal, Spain, India, and Germany with 27.6% individuals responding from outside of Europe.
Outlined below were the highlights of the survey:
- You told us that your primary motivation for accessing ESICM’s educational activities is to acquire new knowledge and skills, but also to exchange practices with other clinicians.
- You would like to see future educational activities focused on the top 3 core topics: acute respiratory failure, haemodynamics, infections and sepsis.
- You would like to see more practical sessions on: Ultrasound (thoracic, abdominal and vascular), echocardiography and methods of cardiovascular monitoring.
- You would also like to see educational sessions on end of life, communication, leadership and healthcare management.
- Educational activities that you are particularly interested in accessing through the society are e-learning, fellowships and webinars. You would like us to develop more educational material for e-learning and Master Classes. With regards to e-learning you are particularly interested in guided training programmes where you have autonomy during learning and are supported by an expert. With Master Classes, you prefer to have interactive sessions with an emphasis on practical workshops, problem-based learning and simulation.
- The main barriers to attending our courses are costs and ability to take time off of clinical work.
A number of suggestions for improvement were made:
- Development of and more access to online material (e-learning, webinars, virtual courses) to facilitate self-directed and distance learning.
- Master Classes and Webinars to be run more frequently. Master Classes to be more interactive. To consider rotation of Master Classes in different countries within and outside of Europe.
- Extend Fellowships so they are not limited to NEXT members. Also consider expanding the Fellowship programme to international candidates.
- The costs of travel, accommodation and registration of the Master Classes make it sometimes inaccessible to trainee doctors, allied health professionals and candidates attending from low and/or middle income countries. Suggestions were made to make the Master Classes more financially accessible to these subgroups.
The ESICM Division of Professional Development is working continuously to improve the portfolio of educational initiatives we provide to our ESICM members and followers. All opinions are important to us. We are working to make our Master Classes more interactive using modern educational tools (interactive debates, problem based learning, practical workshops and simulation). We are focusing on the core topics highlighted in the survey. So far, in 2018 we have run the Mechanical Ventilation: State of the Art, Fundamentals and Update in Sepsis, Managing Pneumonia in the ICU, Life-threatening Emergencies in the ICU and The Art of Trauma Care Master classes, and we are continuously expanding our portfolio of courses. In 2019, we plan to run new courses on Haemodynamic Monitoring, End of Life Care, Communication and Leadership. Our ESICM Academy and online modules are expanding and we have now over 30 modules freely available to our members. Finally, we are looking at ways of financially supporting trainee doctors, allied health professionals and candidates attending our Master Classes from low and/or medium income countries.
In recognition for the time and effort to complete our survey, we have offered 10 free places to Master Classes in 2018-2019. The winners are enlisted below:
- Barbara Ficial, United Kingdom
- Elsa Guerreiro da Cunha Fragoso, Portugal
- Alexandra Pentheroudaki, Greece
- Serena Ranieri, Italy
- Yordanka Yamakova, Bulgaria
- Maher Alnajjar, Saudi Arabia
- Brenno Belazi Nery de Souza Campos, Brazil
- Gerardo Briones Jr., Phillipines
- Goh Qing Yuan, Singapore
- Sjoerd Van Bree, The Netherlands
We would like to thank all of you who participated in the survey.
Dr Pascale Gruber, Chair
ESICM Division of Professional Development
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