The effect of WeChat-based training on improving the village doctors’ knowledge of tuberculosis management: a pre-and-post intervention study from China

Background: In China, around 70% tuberculosis (TB) cases occurred in rural areas. Village doctors played a crucial role in TB cases referral and management. The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of WeChat-based training program on improving the village doctors’ knowledge on TB management.Methods: A One-year WeChat-based training was conducted by means of releasing original contents (in forms of text, poster, video or cartoon), through WeChat subscription account (WeChat SA) once a week, with the topics of TB detection, treatment, prevention and patient’s management. Based on a self-control design, pre-and post-training offline tests were hold using the same self-administered questionnaire to evaluate the training effect.Results: A total of 467 village doctor registered in Zhongmu County (Henan province, China), who worked in the local village clinic or community health center, were included in the study. During the training, sixty original articles were posted through WeChat SA during the one-year training. There are 19, 26 and 15 were displayed in the form of text, poster and other types (such as video or cartoon), and the corresponding average reading times were 245, 38, 199, respectively. With respect to the two tests, the median score increased from 50 (40.0-60.0) to 60 (53.0-70.0) (pConclusions: Our results indicated that WeChat-based training could improve the knowledge of village doctors on TB management. It is worthy to explore more effective new media-based training methods that might promote TB control work in rural China.