Murad Abdulaziz, Lederman Reeva, Bosua Rachelle, Chang Shanton, Wark John D
School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne.
Department of Medicine (Royal Melbourne Hospital), The University of Melbourne.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2017;239:97-103.
As sources of medical information grow online, Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs) have evolved into a potential tool that allows General Practitioners (GPs) to interact through the sharing of their experience and knowledge. However, literature reports that GPs are reluctant to participate in VCoPs especially for their continuing medical education (CME). Currently, no study has explored the design and structural aspects of VCoPs that may lead to enhancing GPs' participation in such online communities. Hence, this paper explores how GPs envisage the use of a VCoP for their CME and how to enhance their participation by conducting an exploratory qualitative study of two focus groups with 10 GPs in each group, accompanied by a specialist and a nurse. Our empirical findings identified two key contributions: i) seven themes that need to be incorporated in the VCoP to enable and support GP's CME through the use of a VCoP; ii) three recommendations to take into consideration for researchers when evaluating VCoPs for CME.
随着在线医学信息源的增加，实践虚拟社区（VCoP）已发展成为一种潜在工具，使全科医生（GP）能够通过分享经验和知识进行互动。然而，文献报道称全科医生不愿参与实践虚拟社区，尤其是在继续医学教育（CME）方面。目前，尚无研究探讨实践虚拟社区的设计和结构方面，这些方面可能会提高全科医生对这类在线社区的参与度。因此，本文通过对两个焦点小组进行探索性定性研究（每个小组有10名全科医生，并配有一名专家和一名护士），探讨了全科医生如何设想将实践虚拟社区用于继续医学教育，以及如何提高他们的参与度。我们的实证研究结果确定了两个关键贡献：i）在实践虚拟社区中需要纳入的七个主题，以便通过使用实践虚拟社区来促进和支持全科医生的继续医学教育；ii）研究人员在评估用于继续医学教育的实践虚拟社区时需要考虑的三项建议。
