The Impact of Concussion Education on the Knowledge and Perceived Expertise of Novice Health Care Professionals

Abstract

Context: Concussion legislation mandates that health care providers have experience in concussion management. Unfortunately, standards for current continuing and clinician education are ill defined. Objective: (1) Determine if a didactic-based educational intervention would increase knowledge and perceived expertise and (2) examine the correlations between the variables of knowledge, experience, and perceived expertise. Design: Prospective cohort study, level II. Patients or Other Participants: Novice health care providers were divided into 2 groups: college sophomore athletic training students (n = 16) and college sophomore medical dietetics students (n = 19). Setting: Classroom setting. Intervention(s): Both groups were administered a knowledge questionnaire before the intervention (Time 1) and again 30 weeks later (Time 3). The athletic training student group completed a didactic intervention and completed the questionnaire at the end of the quarter ∼15 weeks later (Time 2). Main Outcome Measure(s): The main outcome measure was a 34-item questionnaire designed to examine knowledge, experience, and perceived expertise using true-false items, scenarios, Likert-scaled items, and open-ended questions derived from existing evidence and current literature. The scores from the knowledge, perceived expertise, and experience items served as dependent variables. Results: No statistically significant interaction between groups existed on knowledge scores after the didactic intervention (P = .10). Statistically significant interactions existed between group and time for both perceived expertise (F1,33 = 86.38, P ≤ .001) and experience (F1,33 = 14.2, P ≤ .001) with the athletic training student group demonstrating significant increases in scores over time. There was a statistically significant correlation between the number of concussions evaluated and perceived expertise (r2 = 0.630, P ≤ .001). Conclusions: Educators need to implement the best educational techniques to maximize knowledge attainment and perceived expertise. While it appears that clinical experience may supersede didactic education, a combination of both will encourage higher-level thinking and implementation.