Continuing Education in WMAHEC Year 07: An Evaluation Report.

Overview & Synopsis

Two methods for evaluating continuing education of the Western Missouri Area Health Education Center (WMAHEC) are examined. The evaluation questions concern whether WMAHEC provided regionally accessible continuing education and whether WMAHEC catalyzed the development of administrative mechanisms to support continuing education program development. This descriptive program evaluation highlights what took place using the HUEA designated urban/rural categories by county as the mechanism to organize the results. Additional focus concerns the primary health care area designations to achieve further precision in characterizing the outcome data and to inspect the continuing education program effort using the program objectives of "professional environment" and "quality of health care" to explore impact relating to the societal goals of distribution and retention. The evaluation period covered October 1, 1978 through August 30, 1979. Sixty-six programs, 1,950 participants, and 7,150 contact hours of continuing education are the gross data base upon which the description is based. A "deficit/surplus" criteria was used to describe the impact of the continuing education program. (SW)