Disseminating educational innovations in health care practice: training versus social networks.

Improvements and innovation in health service organization and delivery have become more and more important due to the gap between knowledge and practice, rising costs, medical errors, and the organization of health care systems. Since training and education is widely used to convey and distribute innovative initiatives, we examined the effect that following an intensive Teach-the-Teacher training had on the dissemination of a new structured competency-based feedback technique of assessing clinical competencies among medical specialists in the Netherlands. We compared this with the effect of the structure of the social network of medical specialists, specifically the network tie strength (strong ties versus weak ties).

The compatibility of future doctors' career intentions with changing health care demands.

Background: In the Netherlands the medical education system is in the process of being transformed to establish a more demand-oriented health care system. This transformation may entail the occupational restructuring of the medical profession. Meanwhile, on the supply side, the career intentions of future doctors are also changing.