Assessing the Educational Needs of Canadian Gastroenterologists and Gastroenterology Nurses: Challenges to Optimal Care in Crohn’s Disease

Abstract

Educational initiatives should address diagnostic and treatment guidelines, as well as enhancement of clinical performance gaps in health care team processes and the patient-professional therapeutic relationship. To impact care and patient outcomes, these initiatives must be relevant to clinical practice settings and applicable to the practice context.

Roles of healthcare professionals in the management of chronic gastrointestinal diseases with a focus on primary care: A systematic review

“…Studies explored self‐management, the effectiveness of nurse‐led interventions, adherence to pharmacist advice, and the effectiveness of pharmacist/pharmacy‐led testing in a targeted case‐finding service. Studies investigating gaps in care addressed the lack of or variation in available care in the management of IBD, including gaps in communication (between primary care and specialized care providers), knowledge gaps among healthcare professionals, and the variation in the provision of IBD management and care . Finally, burden of disease studies evaluated the impact of gaps in and the delivery of IBD care that affect the overall management of IBD …”

“…This may reflect the fact that IBS, FD, and CeD have more focus on the primary care of the patients than IBD, which is largely managed by specialists and nurses. This can lead to gaps in care, and indeed all of the reviewed studies showed that gaps in care was the predominant theme in IBD research literature . This indicates that there are gaps in care in IBD management, which is not evident in other chronic gastrointestinal diseases.…”

“…Of the selected studies, twenty-two did not meet the inclusion criteria and the remaining studies (n = 19) were appraised for quality. [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] In the search for gray literature, six potential documents were found in the web pages of two organizations, namely Crohn's and Colitis Australia (three documents) 7,8,57 and Crohn's and Colitis UK (three documents) [58][59][60] ; two of these documents were relevant and met the study criteria. 7,58 Thus, a total of 21 articles provided relevant information on the roles of healthcare professionals in gastrointestinal diseases.…”

“…7,58 Thus, a total of 21 articles provided relevant information on the roles of healthcare professionals in gastrointestinal diseases. 7,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]58 Assessment of quality. During quality appraisal, the maximum score achieved for the studies included in our review was 19 out of a possible 20 (deemed high quality) and there were 12 articles included in this category, 7,37,38,44,47,[49][50][51][52][53]56,58 of which nine articles (with scores of 7-13) were of medium quality.…”

“…Description of studies. With regard to the study design or methodology, just under one-third of the studies used qualitative methodology 41,43,45,48,53,54 and most used quantitative methodology, 37,38,40,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]55,56 including randomized control trials, 44,50 cohort study design, 52 cross-sectional study design, 48 non-randomized intervention study design, 38,40,45,46,49 pilot study design, 55 and studies with mixed methodology, 43,45,53 which also included observational study design examining quality standards 7,58 (Fig. 2).…”