Implementing a free continuing education webinar series: a case study of the Partners in Contraceptive Choice and Knowledge (PICCK) program

Abstract

Objectives

Virtual continuing education (CE) is viewed favorably by healthcare providers, but teams who administer these activities have concerns over the high costs to establish and maintain them. To understand the feasibility of implementing web-based CE, we assessed the effort, costs, and outcomes of the Partners in Contraceptive Choice and Knowledge (PICCK) free CE webinar series.

Study design

We reviewed the evaluation data from PICCK's 31 webinars alongside programmatic and process data to describe the outcomes, cost, and effort of implementing this webinar series.

Methods

We evaluated attendance, CE credit, knowledge, satisfaction, and planned behavior outcomes and performed a cost-identification analysis.

Results

Across all webinars, 6,506 people attended and 1,981 CE credits were distributed. The average evaluation score was 3.92/4, 99.8 % of attendees reported the information was relevant to their practice, and 88.0 % planned to make changes based on what they learned. After initial startup of the series infrastructure, 22.1 staff hours were spent administering each webinar. On average, the marginal cost of administering a webinar, including staff time, CE fees, and presenter compensation, was $14.98 per attendee. Webinar administration did not require additional resources beyond the existing technologies and infrastructure available at our institution.

Conclusions

Implementing this well-attended and satisfactory webinar series was feasible and not cost-prohibitive. Our results of high satisfaction and cost effectiveness demonstrate that financial concerns of offering virtual CE may be unfounded. Given the demand for high-quality virtual CE, others may benefit from developing a similar program and can do so without burdensome staff time or costs.