Informativity assessment of websites of territorial attestation commissions on the attestation procedure for healthcare specialists

Introduction. Due to the current decline in medical professionals’ interest in the institution of qualification categories, the problem of improving the quality of information content and its distribution among the target audience becomes particularly relevant. Objective. Quality assessment of the website informativity of territorial attestation commissions and public health administrations of the Russian Federation (RF) subjects regarding the assignment of qualification categories. Materials and methods. The information search about the procedure for attesting healthcare specialists was carried out through 47 websites of the healthcare executive authorities of 83 RF subjects and territorial attestation commissions. A remote survey of 47 medical professionals was conducted: 25 (53.2%) men and 22 (46.8%) women (the average age of respondents was 32.3 ± 4.94 years) with a work experience in the specialty of two years. Each respondent reviewed the information about the attestation procedure posted on the websites of three different RF subjects. The websites were distributed among respondents randomly using an online random number generator. The survey was conducted using a questionnaire developed by the Department of Economics and Marketing at the Academy of Postgraduate Education of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of Russia. Statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS software (IBM Company). Results. In total, 47 (56.6%) websites of territorial attestation commissions contained information on all points of the Order of Ministry of Public Health of the Russian Federation (No. 458n dated August 31, 2023), regarding the rules and procedure for submitting documents. In the survey, the information sufficiency on the rules and procedure for attestation of medical professionals was rated higher (3.13 ± 1.04 points) compared to the information clarity (2.98 ± 1.02 points) ( p = 0.009). The respondents’ scores of the sufficiency and clarity of information on different websites differed significantly: 102.155 ≤ χ 2 ≤ 110.978 ( p ≤ 0.001); for the same websites, the scores were identical ( p = 0.881 and p = 0.976).The scores of information sufficiency and clarity did not depend on the respondents’ age ( p = 0.416 and p = 0.706), gender ( p = 0.163 and p = 0.148), or profession ( p = 0.901 and p = 0.947), or their work in organizations that provide care in different settings ( p = 0.956 and p = 0.983). Conclusions. The information about the attestation procedure of medical professionals, which is available on the websites of the public health authorities of RF subjects and on the websites of the respective territorial attestation commissions, needs to be corrected and updated.