Overview
Representing approximately 3,500 family medicine practitioners in Brazil, the Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina de Família e Comunidade (SBMFC), brings together representatives from the Brazilian Medical Association, the scientific community, the National Commission of Medical Residency, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health to promote the specialty of Family and Community Medicine, provide professional development, sponsor scientific studies and events, collaborate with international entities, and more.
Recently, to support clinical decision making at the point of care, SBMFC began providing all its members with free access to DynaMed. DynaMed, a clinical reference tool from EBSCO, combines the highest quality evidence-based information with the easy, personalized experience that physicians expect.
Challenges
Dr. Zeliete Zambon, the president of the SBMFC, said the organization’s leaders wanted to increase support for the 64,000 family and community physicians working in Brazil.
"It was necessary to play the role of influencer for scientifically based decision making, bringing the proper level of knowledge of family and community medicine to the SBMFC and change the scientific outlook," said Dr. Zambon.
The solution was to provide the SBMFC with an instrument to support clinical decision making that would be constantly updated and, through this, encourage more members to join the society.
Strategy
To help member physicians make better clinical decisions and reduce the need to refer patients to other specialists, the SBMFC invested a large part of their budget in continuous medical education. For doctors to perform as expected, they needed a tool that could be easily accessed at the point of care.
After evaluating the clinical resources BMJ Best practice, UptoDate and DynaMed, an internal committee decided to offer members a discount on individual UptoDate subscriptions to those who were privately interested. But the most relevant decision was to obtain an institutional subscription to DynaMed and make it available free of charge to all SBMFC members.
"DynaMed is closer to the way we work,” explained Dr. Zambon. “We asked a small group of members who have or had access and experience with the three tools, and the response was that the vast majority had an easier time using DynaMed than UptoDate."
Promotion
Once access was opened to everyone, the first step was to coordinate the public launch with SBMFC’s marketing department. Marketing leaders promoted DynaMed in three of SBMFC’s newsletters and on its social media channels (Facebook and Instagram). These communications contained a description of DynaMed, direct links to access, and other relevant content.
In addition, EBSCO participated in the SBMFC National Congress. Benedita Menezes, Customer Success Manager at EBSCO Clinical Decisions, joined a roundtable discussion with Dr. Zambon and Dr. Jetele Seleme. They reinforced the importance of DynaMed as a clinical decision support tool at the point of care and encouraged members to use it in their daily work.
"The support of the team to carry out this communication with the partners and all the proposed activities to increase the use of the tool were pivotal to the successful adoption by our members,” said Dr. Zambon. “This certainly makes us want to maintain this partnership (with EBSCO) for the future."
Benefits and Outcomes
Since the launch, SBMFC members have successfully integrated DynaMed into their workflows, making frequent use of the evidence-based summaries and recommendations and demonstrating a high degree of confidence in the tool.
In one year of subscription, access has been constant, with more than 90,000 sessions in one year via the web version or DynaMed mobile application. With the DynaMed mobile app, which provides both online and offline access, physicians can get the answers they need wherever they are. The DynaMed app is free and compatible with iOS and Android devices.
In addition, since partnering with EBSCO, SBMFC has increased its membership by 110 percent. Offering DynaMed has proven to be a major differentiator.