Tackling Comprehensive Asthma Education for Providers One Breath at a Time

Abstract

Background

Exponential growth of knowledge in asthma has advanced the diagnosis and treatment of personalized, phenotype- and endotype-driven care in asthma leading to improved clinical outcomes. However, many knowledge and practice gaps persist among health care professionals. Microlearning has demonstrated efficacy in educational outcomes but is often limited by fragmentation and incomplete information. To integrate the benefits of microlearning into a comprehensive asthma curriculum that addresses knowledge gaps in this rapidly growing field, we built an extensive curriculum in bite-sized, “one breath at a time” portions for physicians managing asthma.

Research question

Is creating an asthma curriculum online educational program with modules of microlearning feasible and useful in improving knowledge of clinicians?

Study Design and Methods

The CHEST Curriculum Pathway for Asthma was published online on the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) learning management site in September 2022. It was derived from existing asthma education at the CHEST organization and was vetted by asthma experts. Pretests and posttests, satisfaction surveys, and user engagement data were collected.

Results

In the first 6 months, 523 participants engaged with the CHEST Curriculum Pathway for Asthma. Participant satisfaction was high, and participants answered 68% of the knowledge pretest correctly and 82% of the posttest correctly. Participants completed 82.8% of the individual videos that they opened. Completion rates for each asthma chapter ranged from 22.6% to 57.9%.

Interpretation

This educational program is, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive microlearning online curriculum issued by a medical association on asthma. Our results suggest that the CHEST Curriculum Pathway for Asthma was effective in improving knowledge and had high user satisfaction. Comprehensive online educational programs broken into microlearning components may be useful in other topics in pulmonary medicine.