Original Communication
Primary Care Clinicians’ Knowledge and Confidence About Newborn Screening for Sickle Cell Disease: Randomized Assessment of Educational Strategies

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Objective

In Massachusetts, primary care clinicians receive and act upon hemoglobinopathy newborn screening results. We assessed clinicians’ knowledge, confidence, and practices regarding hemoglobinopathy newborn screening, and the effect of mailed educational materials vs interactive seminar on knowledge and confidence.

Methods

A randomized educational intervention trial was performed at 15 community health sites. Practices were randomized to determine the order in which the educational interventions were administered: mailed educational materials first or interactive seminars on the management of hemoglobinopa-thy newborn screening results first. Clinicians’ demographics, knowledge, confidence, and practices were assessed by a survey. Posttests were administered soon after the intervention.

Results

Responses came from 85 of 170 eligible providers (50%). Twenty-nine percent of respondents provided both pretests and posttests. In respondents with paired data, knowledge on a 5-point scale improved by 1.4 ± 0.4 (mean ± standard error of the mean, p = .003), while self-efficacy on a 16-point scale increased by 1.3 ± 0.3, p = .002. There were no significant differences between seminar and mailed-materials groups.

Conclusions

Both educational strategies led to modest improvements in knowledge about newborn screening for hemoglobin disorders. Enhancing knowledge and confidence about newborn screening-related tasks may improve clinicians’ capacity to act upon newborn screening results for hemoglobinopathies.

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Funding/Support: This study is supported in part by grant T32PE10018 from the Health Resources and Services Administration to the Harvard Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship Program (Jonathan Finkelstein, principal investigator) and grant 1H4600232 from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute K24 grant HL004184 (Dr Neufeld).

Previous Presentation: Results from this study were presented in part at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting on May 15, 2005, in Washington, DC.

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