Surveys, needs assessments, gap analysis . . . its enough to make the words I type come out sounds like the “whaa, whaa . . . whaa, whaa, whaa, whaa” that comes from Charlie Brown’s teachers.  Despite this, these are important.  When we begin to develop a course, the first step is to understand what the needs for the course might be.  In order to do this, several mechanisms are put into place.

Surveys help the us connect with three important groups: the providers who will be taking the course, the educators who will be teaching the course, and physicians who oversee emergency medical care.  Surveys also present challenges for us in that the rate of return is usually limited.  In our case, we will likely be below 5% in total returns from those who are targeted to take the survey. 

A second mechanism that we use is the focus group.  Focus groups allow us to explore information obtained from the surveys and to also hear directly from providers and educators about their concerns and ideas regarding the courses.

We will use the information from these two mechanisms to determine not only what the needs are for each transition course, but also to understand where the gap in understanding is most significant.  By understanding the “gap” we can build courses that focus most on the topics that are not as well known.

So, if you’ve been wondering where this is going, stay tuned.  We’ll take the  information and plug it into the development process for the next step of creating a clear list of tasks and objectives.