Self-assessment for knowledge building in health care

The 2002 Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care recommended improvements in education and practice in end-of-life care for a growing and aging Canadian population. The aim of this study was to design, develop, and evaluate a continuing professional development program in end-of-life care for accreditation by the Ontario College of Family Physicians. The challenge was to provide a robust, interactive program easily accessible to busy family doctors distributed over a large geographic area. A comprehensive and collaborative knowledge building model, blending asynchronous Knowledge Forum (R) technology and synchronous interactive videoconferencing was created, to enable individual knowledge improvement and community advancement of ideas in clinical practice. The focus of this design research was a novel method of online, embedded and concurrent self-assessment. Results indicated gains in understanding and program satisfaction associated with knowledge building participation.