HEALTH PROFESSIONALS´ PREFERRED WAYS OF RECEIVING INFORMATION RELATED TO CONTINUING EDUCATION IN A CHILEAN SCHOOL OF NURSING

Abstract

Communication is a basic function in society, and one of the goals in health is to promote continuing education in health professionals and facilitate this learning process. The purpose of the study was to explore preferences of health professionals to receive information regarding continuing education programs offered by the School of Nursing at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. The authors developed an ad hoc self-administered questionnaire, which was applied to 93 health professionals who previously signed an informed consent form. Results showed that health professionals had access to continuing education programs through information received by their workplace supervisors and coordinators (36%, n=42). They preferred to receive information in the future through personal e-mail (40%, n=38), e-mail from the workplace (20%, n=19) and massive media. Authors concluded that Internet is becoming an effective way of communication. Therefore, on-line databases are a very useful communicative tool, however they require careful use to prevent abuse and also to plan and use other ways of communication in order to assure that the message is fixed in the target population.