I reviewed the Environmental Scan of Family Violence Training for Health and Social Service Providers in Canada, developed as part of the Researching the Impact of Service Provider Education (RISE) Project at McMaster University. (Researching the Impact of Service Provider Education [RISE] Project, 2022).The purpose of this environmental scan was to identify and catalogue publicly available training resources designed to support health and social service providers in recognizing and responding to family violence. The scan was conducted at a national level and examined resources available across Canada.

 

 The article can be viewed here  rise-environmental-scan.pdf

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This environmental scan relates to my health promotion topic, which focuses on developing standardized brain injury (BI) education for service providers working with adults after brain injury. The scan shows that training resources vary in format, topic, and accessibility, which can contribute to differences in provider knowledge across sectors.

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The strength of this scan was that it followed a environmental scan methodology. The authors acknowledge there is no single standardized methodology for environmental scanning for use in health professions research, they followed the methodology that has been used in the analysis of professional development and education resources. They used a specific research question that provided boundaries for the scan and focus data collection. 

Another strength is the way the scan maps publicly available training resources. Through this process, the scan provides an overview of the current education landscape.  The scan reviewed 22,775 potential links and identified 285 training resources. The large initial body of materials narrowed down increases confidence the researchers captured a wide range of relevant education materials. 

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A limitation is the scan relied on keyword searches of organizational websites. If training resources were described using different terminology or not easily searchable on those websites, they may not have been captured in the scan. Another limitation of the scan is the authors only includes publicly available resources and does not capture training that providers may receive through formal education programs or internal organizational training.

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References:

Researching the Impact of Service Provider Education (RISE) Project. (2022). Environmental scan of family violence training for health and social service providers in Canada. McMaster University. https://riseproject.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2022/09/rise-environmental-scan.pdf

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