| Objectives The development of general medicine and training of the general practitioners have very important significance to the national health development, and long-distance education of general practitioners has been becoming critical but faces some problems.Therefore, we had two objectives in this study. First, to identify problems arising from the Long-distance Education Program of Yunnan Province for General Practitioners and relelvant reasons. Second, to propose effective suggestions and solutions by integrating domestic and overseas expertiseon long-distance education with the actual circumstances of Yunnan Province.Methods A variety of methods were used in this study:Literature review was used:To obtain a comprehensive overview of relevant research at homeand abroad, in particular of the quality assessment mechanism of the long-distance Education Program for General Practitionersof Yunnan Province, based on a wide range of references ranging from papers to archives. It also focuses on whether learners logged in on weekends or not, whether they had completed all the learning tasks or not, and so forth.On-spot Investigation was another method used:to inquire into information of the on-line learners with a questionnaire, as well as their attitudes toward some aspects of the long-distance training program including the organization, training contents, on-line services and so on.We consulted experts on a range of issues including theoretical frameworks, questionnaire design, data analysis and so forth.ResultsThe main results of this study included three aspects:"On-line Learning Process and Performance", "Learners’overall assessment of the long-distance Education Program for General Practitioners" and " In-depth Interview".1.The general practitioner training during the opening of the long-distance education network learning platform, The numbers of days the students logged in on the learning platform for the first time after the opening of the learning platform ranged between 1 and 59, which are statistically different in age (H=29.89, P<0.001), education (H=24.48, P<0.001), title (H=18.53, P<0.001), region (H=264.50, P<0.001), and other aspects. During the opening of the network learning platform, students logged on totally 1 times up to 36 times. The total logging on times are statistically different in gender (z=00055.00, P<0.001), age (H=32.50, P<0.001), education (H=8.12, P<0.001), title (H=12.45, P<0.001) and area (H=38.51, P<0.001), Students’learning time was between 3 and 59 days, which is statistically differentlast in gender (t=2.78,P<0.001), age (F=8.51, P<0.001), education (F=4.46, P=0.001); title (F=7.85, P<0.001) and area (F=45.72, P<0.001), For all the students in the network learning platform during the opening, the cumulative visits to the platform were 12818, among which,9715 took place from Monday to Friday, accounting for 75.79% of the total visits;3103 occurred on Saturday and Sunday, accounting for " 24.21%. Whether the students visited onin time for the weekends or not was not different statistically in gender(chi-square= 1.02,P=0.001),age(chi-square=3.73,P=0.001),education(chi-squar e=0.26, P=0.001), title (chi-square=1.10, P=0.001), working fixed number of year (chi-square=1.39, P=0.001), or area (chi-square=0.01, P=0.001). Among all the trained practitioners,843 completed remote education tasks (84.40%), while 156 did not (15.60%). Whether they completed learning content or not is related to their gender(chi-square=11.66, P<0.001), age (chi-square= 82.15, P< 0.001), education (chi-square=9.15,P<0.001),title (chi-square=28.18, P<0.001)and area (chi-square=33.67, P<0.001).23 and 24 days after the site was open was the peak time of Students’ peak time is related to their gender (t=2.98, P<0.001), age (F=37.59, P<0.001), education, and (F=48.87, P<0.001), title (F=41.58, P<0.001) and area (F=319.53, P< 0.001), Study states of 49.30% (6319 people) of the students study for normal state.2. The field survey, showed that, generally the students of distance education program gave good evaluation marks to the program, with 56.44% of them thinking that remote teaching.Most of the students thought that distance education would help them in terms of theoretical knowledge (80.89%) and clinical practice skills (78.22%); 73.00% of students thought remote teaching way was good; 70.67% of students believed that the remote teaching could meet their on-the-job learning needs; There were 57.33% students who thought that the remote teaching way was best for training about therories of general medicine. Some 70.00% of the participants were satisfied with the remote teaching back-stage services process; 73.78% of the students with the remote teaching system operation; 58.00% with supervision work by School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University; 75.56% of the students believed that, it was necessary to increase "evaluation and feedback. However, they did not think it necessary to set up "man-machine dialogue" pop-up (64.22%), or upper limit for learning every day (63.33%). More than half of the students (55.11%) believed that the time for the distance education and training was short.3. For the individual in-depth interviews, students, base management and network back-stage management personnel were randomly selected, to collect their views of general practitioner training throught the remote education program. Interviewees valued the teaching methods and teaching content generally. Students surveyed said they thought the following needs to be further improved:the teaching content, teaching methods, stability of network videos, ways to remember, and so on the base managers surveyed said they should strictly send selected participants and focus on students personal needs; Back-stage network managers thought the older students should be trained on computer and network operation technology ahead of time.Conclusions The main conclusions of this study are as follows:①The Long-Distance Education Program of Yunnan Province for General Practitioners was running smoothly and feasible.② Survey participants made positive comments on this training program.③ A certain proportion of learners’logging-in records and performances were abnormal.④ There is much yet to be done to improve the teaching-related management. From the research findings, this study proposed the following recommendations:① The training program should be reasonably prolonged to make learning tasks less pressing.②The teaching-related management services of learning platform and man-machine interaction should be improved.③The abnormal logging-in records and performances of learners should be minimized by imposing tougher regulations. ④ The training program should be standardized with a strict course access.⑤The curriculum and the learning platform should be developed in a scientific way guided by related policies and standards.⑥More investments should be needed to build network platform and improve the quality of training.⑦The curriculum and the learning platform should be well publicized to help more learners to benefit from the program. |
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