pic by rob the lomond on flickr
I just spent 3 lovely days in Gasgow, Britain’s most wonderful urban space (yes, I know that can be argued about, but as this is MY blog I can sprout my opinion vigorously). I always enjoy visiting this compact, ever improving city and marvel at the quality of life that can be had there (while of course not ignoring the pockets of terrible deprivation). The reason for my visit was the RCGP’s annual conference, the highlight in the ever-expanding throng of gatherings for general practitioners. There was plenty to marvel at: Steve Field’s comments on Fox News (‘Fascist TV-Station’), Mike O’Briens insistance that practice boundaries have to be abolished (loud boo-hiss in the room), Ben Riley’s (no, not the Jazz Drummer) excellent talk on the College’s e-learning strategy, Amanda Howe chairing a seminar on GP research, Stewart Mercer’s talk on managing multimorbidity in deprived areas: these were all engrossing, fascinating and possibly practice-changing.
There was the odd downer though. The promised talk on telemedicine didn’t make it into the final programme and the presentation by the South Eastern Scotland repesentatives of NHS education for Scotland (btw, try to find anything on that site) left me a bit underwhelmed. They were proudly showing off their new e-learning initiative, featuring little videoclips, clickable (interactive?) cases and forums. It all had a very nineties feel to it.
What I don’t get is why you would try to re-invent the wheel and spend another chunk of money if there is already plenty of (free) material out there? If every health authority in the country is starting to develop their own GP-curriculum based e-learning initiative, the numerous outside contractors will be laughing all the way to the bank.
On top of that it’s one thing to set up a web based initiative, but finding enough people to continuously develop content and keeping it up to date is not only expensive but also terribly time consuming and really should be managed by a dedicated team. E-GP, the e-learning initiative by the department of health has everything one could want from an online initiative, and it has the financial backup to keep it going.
So why not point your trainees there?
Anyway. These are only minor complaints. I nevertheless had a blast: learning and having fun at the same time must be perfect outcome for the organisers.