eLearning for Rural Practice

Recently I took part in a teleconference with Malcolm Ward, RCGP Chair of the Rural Form, and Ben Riley, Medical Director for eLearning at the RCGP, to discuss ways of improving access to online CPD to rural practitioners.

There is a lot happening to make more online learning accessible to medical practitioners, particularly as the use of online educational modules is increasingly encouraged to support preparation for appraisal and revalidation.  This is reflected in the scale of work happening under the umbrella of the Department of Health’s “E-Learning for Healthcare” programme (see www.e-GP.org).  Royal Colleges of most specialties are investing heavily to offer their members access to accredited and relevant updates.

The RCGP has a number of ongoing projects, but central to revalidation are the Essential Knowledge Updates which some members may already be familiar with.  These aim to provide RCGP members with a 6-monthly update of the most pertinent changes in practice, via an online learning module.

However, through various conversations, the RCGP Rural Forum is acutely aware that some remote and rural practitioners experience significant difficulty in accessing online content, especially due to slow internet connections.  Judging from recent comments from the telecommunications industry, this is unlikely to change overnight.  And so, if too much reliance is placed on high-bandwidth video and media content for eLearning, this could prevent many of our rural colleagues from accessing this core resource.

What’s the answer?  We’d like to invite ideas!  The Rural Forum is looking into ways of signposting rural practitioners to particular modules of interest, and this could include an indicator of how fast your connection needs to be for certain modules.  We are also looking into other ways of providing access to elearning resources – perhaps via CD-Rom or memory stick.  This is work in progress.

In the meantime we would like to invite your comments, not least to understand the scale of the problem.  If you’re a rural GP and concerned about access to these resources – please get in touch, and contribute to our online poll on this issue – available shortly.

RCGP Rural Forum Officially Launched!

Yesterday the RCGP Rural Forum was officially launched, at the RCGP Conference in Glasgow.

Malcolm Ward presented the background to some of the key aims of the Forum, and Prof Richard Hayes joined us by recorded video from Australia to make some recommendations based on Australian rural practitioners’ experience.  David Hogg explained the GP curriculum – including proposed changes to extend training to five years – and the need for rural input to maintain and promote access to rural careers.

The event was well attended and feedback was positive to move the Forum forward to ensure decent representation of UK’s rural practitioners within the RCGP.

Within the next week, we hope to publish these presentations, as the Forum was able to link-in with the AiT Committee’s pilot scheme to make conference presentations available to those who are unable to attend.

In the meantime, you can keep track of daily conference news via GP’s special conference bulletins.

4 days until the RCGP Conference

In just 4 days time, Glasgow will host the RCGP Annual Conference at the SECC.  Some of the conference events have already been highlighted on RuralGP, and this year looks set to be one of the biggest conferences yet.

As well as an extensive programme for trainees, the conference will see the official launch of the RCGP Rural Forum.  Members of the college should already have received information on how to join, and already many members have signed up.

The key session to look out for is B8 during Thursday afternoon, where members of the Forum will be speaking about some of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.  There are other rurally-relevant sessions too, plus the Scottish Clinical Skills Unit – an amazing facility within an articulated lorry – will be in attendance.

We hope to see you there!

Scotland: Enquiry into Out of Hours Cover

The Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee is inviting submissions to an enquiry regarding out of hours care provision in rural areas of Scotland.

In particular, they are keen to hear views on the following questions:

• What do you think is the most sustainable and cost-effective way to provide adequate out-of-hours services in rural areas?
• What are your views on the quality of out-of-hours care provided in rural areas, in particular clinical safety and effectiveness?
• What are your views on the accessibility and availability of out-of-hours care in rural areas?
• How well do you think NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service link in with existing out-of-hours services?

These are issues that many readers will already have discussed previously, such as the recent review of the Scottish Ambulance Service response in rural areas.

The RCGP Rural Forum will submit a response on behalf of members, and comments have been obtained from the Yahoo Mailing List, however anyone is free to contribute independently – the deadline for this is November 6th 2009 and further details are available here.

Study: Rural Placements for UK Medical Students

It’s increasingly recognised that rural practice can offer undergraduate medical students excellent learning opportunities, with higher-than-average satisfaction compared with their urban counterparts.  There can be many reasons for this, not least that students are often forced into immersing themselves in the local community, as a rural placement will normally involve staying within the locality, instead of being able to return home from an urban practice which is normally easier to commute to.

Furthermore, there is good evidence that giving students a good experience of rural practice during the early stages of their careers, stimulates a considerable number of them to seriously consider taking up rural posts once more qualified.  That’s certainly the case in my experience, when a fulfilling 5 week placement at the Group Practice in Stornoway made me think more about rural general practice as a career option.

However, how rural practice is offered to undergraduates, is implemented in many different ways across the UK.  Of course, that is no bad thing, but we are starting to better understand the relationship between early student experiences and later career choice.

This piece of research from the IRH considers the rural practice opportunities for students at Keele University, and reports on some of the key findings from conversations with students who have benefitted from such placements.

>> Rural and Remote Health Journal – View Article.

African Health Placement (part 2)

A couple of days ago we linked to a video from the African Health Placement project.  Here’s part 2.

Rural Health Placements in South Africa

This video comes from South Africa, where opportunities for doctors – including from the UK – appear to be available.  The African Health Placements project is a collaboration between the Foundation for Professional Development and the Rural Health Initiative.

If you have some spare time coming up and fancy a bit of rural hospital practice, check out the AHP’s site for further details.

Northern Territory Remote & Rural Training

Australia has a well developed rural training programme, and several established networks by which this is organised.

This video, recently published on YouTube shows how the rural GP training programme is delivered in the Northern Territory – including ways in which opportunities are provided for medical students.

Tips for Teleconferencing

The RCGP Rural Forum regularly uses teleconferencing to link up members from across the UK.  It saves money and time, and is particularly useful for rural practitioners who would have prohibitively long journeys out of their practice area to attend meetings.

Teleconferencing is widely used for other purposes too – and its use is likely to grow, especially as the technology becomes more widely available.  It’s already very easy to set up a teleconference via providers such as BT MeetMe.  Skype allows connected users to form a teleconference of up to 8 participants completely free.

However, what happens once you’ve got your teleconference set to go?  It can be easy to assume that it’s an easy thing to do, however without being able to see other participants, it can quickly become difficult to keep control of the agenda, and make for productive conversations.

Here’s two articles that help to explain the “etiquette” and some useful tips to bear in mind when having teleconferences.

• 33 Tips for Using Teleconferencing
• How Stuff Works – Teleconferencing Etiquette

Videoconferencing needs similar considerations, however we hope to run an article on the do’s and don’ts of VC in the near future.  If you’d like to contribute to this, please get in touch.

View from Australia

Rural practice is alive and kicking down under.  There are many similarities between UK and Auzzie general practice, however the extremes of remoteness are more widespread in Australia.  As a result, there are many innovative projects ongoing to reduce the effect of peripherality, and improve access to healthcare.

The Royal Australian College of GPs has its own established National Rural Faculty, and it’s interesting to see what challenges they’re addressing.  Their newsletter BushAlert provides some great summaries of the work currently going on.  The latest issue – September – focuses on the challenges that can prevent women from working in rural practice, an issue that is certainly pertinent to UK practice too.

All the previous issues are archived on the site and are quick to read.  Why not have a look?