Impact of an online course on enhancing the diagnosis of Chagas disease in Latin America

Abstract

Objective: Chagas disease poses a public health problem in Latin America, and the electrocardiogram is a crucial tool in the diagnosis and monitoring of this pathology. In this context, the aim of this study was to quantify the change in the ability to detect electrocardiographic patterns among healthcare professionals after completing a virtual course.

Materials and methods: An asynchronous virtual course with seven pre-recorded classes was conducted. Participants answered the same questionnaire at the beginning and end of the training. Based on these responses, pre and post-test results for each participant were compared.

Results: The study included 1656 participants from 21 countries; 87.9% were physicians, 5.2% nurses, 4.1% technicians, and 2.8% medical students. Initially, 3.1% answered at least 50% of the pre-test questions correctly, a proportion that increased to 50.4% after the course (p=0.001). Regardless of their baseline characteristics, 82.1% of course attendees improved their answers after completing the course.

Conclusions: The implementation of an asynchronous online course on electrocardiography in Chagas disease enhanced the skills of both medical and non-medical personnel to recognize this condition.

Keywords: Chagas disease; Diagnosis; Electrocardiogram; Medical education.

Figure 1. Percentage of correct answers in each question of the exam before (pretest) and after the course (posttest). Los valores de p corresponden al resultado de la prueba de McNemar para la comparación de cada par de preguntas.