Quality incentive program boosts climate change knowledge among clinicians

Key takeaways:

• Clinicians in “climate-facing” specialties to consider education relevant to their practice.
• The mean subject knowledge score increased after the intervention.

Most clinicians expressed positive attitudes and increased knowledge about climate change and health following the completion of a quality incentive program, researchers found.

Results from the survey study — published in JAMA Network Open — showed the majority of respondents felt the educational training modules on climate change and health care sustainability had relevance to both personal lives and clinical practice.

The rapidly progressing effects of climate change have contributed to multiple adverse health outcomes, while experts have highlighted the need for education on the topic in medical schools

“While surveys demonstrate that most U.S. residents are alarmed or concerned about global warming, with differences in attitudes based on age, gender, and race, little is known about attitudes among physicians,” Wynne Armand, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote in JAMA Network Open.

Surveys have also shown “that the majority of physicians do not feel prepared to address climate change’s impact on health or to take action,” they added.

In the study, Armand and colleagues assessed the impact of a QIP on perception and knowledge on climate change among 2,417 participating clinicians (mean age, 48.9 years; 51.5% men) from a dozen specialties.

The QIP, conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital, offered educational modules in the form of narrated slide decks. All clinicians received several pieces of general information on climate change, including:

• climate change impacts on health;
• the health care sector’s environmental footprint;
• current hospitalwide proenvironmental actions; and
• suggestions for taking action.

Clinicians were also given additional, customized presentations based on their specialty.

Participants then completed a survey following module completion, which assessed their pre- and post-module knowledge scores, perception of the relevance of the materials and their attitude on using the modules.

Clinicians who completed the training and survey received compensation as part of the incentive program.

The researchers found that 73.1% of participants thought the modules were relevant or very relevant to their lives, whereas 65.4% reported the modules to be relevant or very relevant to their clinical practice.

Clinicians in specialties classified as having direct contact with the effects of climate change, or “climate-facing” — like emergency medicine, psychiatry and allergy — were likelier to think that the education was relevant to their clinical practice vs. clinicians in specialties that are not climate-facing.

Additionally, female clinicians were more likely to consider the education as relevant to their clinical practice compared with male clinicians.Age did not affect clinicians’ attitudes on climate change relevancy to their lives or practice, “in contrast to some studies in the general population,” Armand and colleagues wrote.

Researchers observed a mean self-reported subject knowledge score of 3.14 before the training and 3.92 after training.

Overall, study investigators identified 56.1% of the optional comments provided by 446 practitioners as positive.Most of these positive comments “highlighted the importance of the topic and included suggestions for improving the carbon footprint of the hospital,” they added.

Ultimately, the findings suggest “additional detailed education on interventions for environmentally sustainable health care delivery would be welcome, and this provides an opportunity for institutional action,” Armand and colleagues wrote.

The method of training also proved effective “and could be expanded to other health care workers and other hospitals while being mindful of differences in audience (including department or division) when doing so,” they concluded.