Background:

Digital education is “an approach to teaching and learning, representing all or part of the educational model applied, that is based on the use of electronic media and devices as tools for improving access to training, communication and interaction and that facilitates the adoption of new ways of understanding and developing learning”. Digital education comprises a wide range of interventions that can be broadly divided into offline digital education, online digital education, digital game-based learning, massive open online courses (MOOCs), psychomotor skills trainers, virtual reality environments, virtual patient simulations, and mLearning. Chronic wounds pose an immense economic and psychosocial burden to patients and the healthcare system as caring for them require highly specialized personnel. Current training strategies, face significant barriers, such as lack of time due to work commitments, distance from provider centres and costs. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate novel approaches to increase the effectiveness of learning programs on chronic wound management available to healthcare professionals.

Objective:

Our main objective is to assess the effectiveness of digital education, as a standalone or as part of a blended learning approach in improving pre- and post-registration healthcare professionals’ knowledge, attitudes, practical skills, and behaviour in the management of chronic wounds, and their satisfaction with the intervention. Secondary objectives are to evaluate patient related outcomes, cost-effectiveness of the interventions, and any unfavourable or undesirable outcomes that may arise.

Methods:

This systematic review will follow Cochrane methodology. Two independent reviewers will screen the library for included studies. We will describe the screening process using a flowchart as per PRISMA guidelines. We will extract the data using a previously developed, structured data extraction form. Included studies will be quality assessed using the Risk of Bias tool by Cochrane. We will narratively summarize the data, and if it is possible, we will conduct a meta-analysis.

Results:

We are currently screening full text papers against our inclusion and exclusion criteria. We are expecting to complete our review in the next three to four months.

Conclusions:

This systematic review will provide an in-depth analysis of digital education strategies to train healthcare providers in the management of chronic wounds. We consider this topic particularly relevant given the current challenges facing healthcare systems worldwide: shortages of skilled personnel and steep increase of older adults due to an increase in life expectancy.

ClinicalTrial:

This protocol has been registered with PROSPERO. Registration ID: CRD42018109971