A GP Guide to e-learning resources

There are many online resources aimed at primary healthcare professionals in the UK. However, it can sometimes be difficult to know which one to use and what services each one offer. Here is a brief review of the mostly commonly used or most useful resources. Many of the resources will track your use of the site and provide you with evidence of the information you accessed for your revalidation portfolio.

Royal College of GPs.

The college is working in collaboration with the GMC to develop the revalidation process for GPs, and the new e learning packages support the revalidation requirements.

Essential Knowledge Updates? Six monthly updates of new and changing knowledge in general practice, with accompanying knowledge challenges. To find out more, click here.

Online Courses? Online educational courses available from the RCGP to support the continuing professional development of GPs and other primary care practitioners. To find out more, click here.

e-GP is a joint project between the Royal College of General Practitioners and e-Learning for Healthcare to develop a comprehensive programme of e-learning modules to support General Practice education. The e-learning in e-GP consists of a range of interactive e-learning sessions and ‘virtual consultations’, designed to underpin the RCGP curriculum. http://www.e-lfh.org.uk/Projects/General-Practitioners.aspx

GP Notebook

www.gpnotebook.co.uk is clearly aimed at GPs and is an excellent resource to use whilst in a consultation. The content is linked together in a very intuitive way that allows finding information easy. The search facility seems to always find what you need. It is primarily an online encyclopaedia of medical conditions but also allows a PDP tracking facility.

Doctors Net

www.doctors.net.uk is one of the most well known of all sites aimed at doctors. It is aimed at any clinician working in the UK and not merely for GPs. It provides a popular email service as well as heavily populated chat forums. The site also provides online learning resources for most specialties in addition to other elements such as medical news.

BMJ Learning

www.bmjlearning.com is a site run by the BMJ editorial team and is aimed solely at online learning and recording of information. The site hosts a large number of learning modules, although you now need to be a member of the BMA to access it for free.

Onmedica

www.onmedica.net provides a wide range of GP-oriented materials and aims to provide a framework where all learning (both offline and online) can be recorded in addition to providing information on key issues that may affect patient care. The site is an online learning portal that provides a number of free resources primarily aimed at GPs. The resources serve to provide general reference and also can be used as part of a personal Development plan (PDP). A PDP Tracker tool is available for use on the site. This allows items read on the website (and other learning activities) to be recorded under the GMC PDP headings and also integrated into other applications such as the NHS Appraisal Toolkit.

Other providers include

Essential evidence plus. www.essentialevidenceplus.com A subscription site which has a vast amount of evidence based medicine easily accessible, is the source of daily infopems and is available on your PC desktop or downloadable to your PDA. Try the free trial.
EMIS Mentor is available to all EMIS practices and includes an automatic PDP tracker.
Global Family Doctor is a free service from WONCA that provides emails alerts to keep you up to date with what's new in the world of general practice medicine. Look at www.globalfamilydoctor.com and subscribe to the Journal Alerts.
Univadis www.univadis.com is offered by the pharmaceutical company MSD. They offer an aggregate of information from a number of external sites as well as their own medical news.
Isabel www.isabelhealthcare.com is a subscription service that is a dynamic diagnosis checklist system that, for any combination of signs and symptoms, will instantly present back a list of likely diagnoses to consider. Try the free trial.

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