HIN Continuing Education Workteam “Assessing Your Needs” Survey Results

At the end of 2010, the HIN CE workteam sent out a survey asking what you wanted the CE Committee to offer. Eight completed the survey. This is a summary of your responses.

The first four questions asked about possible themes or sessions. Each choice could be ranked “Top priority”, “Somewhat important and will attend”, “Maybe not right now” or “Not a priority at all”.

1. How to use new and existing U of C resources

Rated “Top priority” or “Somewhat important and will attend” were: CINAHL (7 votes), PubMed (6), RefWorks (6), and Advanced searching in OVID databases (6). Web of Science was next in priority, followed by Point of care resources and Grey literature resources. MDConsult and STAT!Ref trailed last.

2. How to use some new technologies/software

RSS feeds and E-table of contents each garnered 6 votes, followed by Web 2.0 tools, iGoogle, Drupal, and Blackboard, each with 5. Creating displays received 3 and Jing to create instructional videos got 2.

3. Personal Empowerment
Here, Communication (7) and Time Management (7) were the skills selected the most, followed by Leadership (5) and Business writing (5). Project management lagged with 4 votes.

4. Work/Life Issues

How to deal with difficult client situations was ranked “Top priority” or “Somewhat important and will attend” by everyone. “Job and my health” and “Giving feedback, getting feedback” each received 6 votes. “Work safety” received 5 votes and “Balancing work and personal life” received 4.

We also asked about challenges to attending CE sessions and then best times and locations for training. You responded unanimously with “Lack of resources (e.g.: Time, Money, Not having the work coverage)”. Two also chose “Not knowing the sources of programs”. No-one picked “Not knowing which sessions would be most appropriate for me” or “Don’t think taking CE programs is important.” There was a comment “location location location”, which many can probably relate to.

There were no obvious preferences in times nor locations: the morning: 2, the afternoon: 2, and it doesn’t matter: 4. No-one chose the last Friday of the month, which was the regular day choice that we offered. The location question also did not elicit clear preferences. Two preferred sessions at your Knowledge Centre, 3 at Health Sciences Library, while 5 said it doesn’t matter.

I hope you found the results interesting. Thank you for taking the time to give feedback. We have already offered some sessions and are using the survey results to guide us in implementing others.