Impact of the NB Medical ‘Hot Topics’ GP Update Course

It is often quoted in the medical literature that traditional medical CME is ineffective in achieving ‘knowledge translation’ i.e. translating clinical research findings into changes in practice. Implementation Science2012;7:50

We challenge that view with our Hot Topics GP Update course. Having received many emails over the years from delegates telling us how the course had changed their practice, in 2013 we surveyed our delegates to assess the impact of their learning.

We sent a ‘Survey Monkey’ questionnaire to 3,854 delegates 6 weeks after attending the course in April 2013. 844 answered (22% response rate)

·         97% of delegates have changed practice as a result of new knowledge gained on the course

·         72% of delegates use the material at least weekly to find evidence-based answers to clinical problems

·         70% had already used the material for their own in-house training and teaching

·         24% had already completed a personal audit based on an idea from the course

 
We repeated the survey 6 months after attending the course, 200 delegates responded (5% of all delegates).

·         93% of respondents had maintained a change in practice at 6 months

 

How have GPs changed practice following the course?

We have over 800 examples on file of how practice has changed as a result of the course.  See below for some examples.

 

Conclusion: our data confirms our view that a high quality, independent 'traditional' medical course enthusiastically delivered to GPs with quality supporting materials can change practice and leads to meaningful quality improvements for patients, which are maintained at 6 months.

 

Simon Curtis FRCGP

Medical Director NB Medical Education

scurtis@nbmedical.com

Some example responses from delegates (over 800 on file, available on request) as to how they have changed practice include:

·         Prompted the formation of a register and the start of health checks for patients with a learning disability in the practice.

·         I now usually check urine samples in children with a fever before saying the cause is viral.

·         Cancer diagnosis - have researched RAT/Qcancer and has improved my management of suspicious cases especially those not fulfilling 2WW criteria

·         Lifestyle questionnaire for mental health QOF, elderly and poly pharmacy, multiple disease registers looking at managing better

·         I developed a template in the practice for management of paediatric constipation

·         Our prevalence of AF is lower that it should be and we have tried to look at a simple way to pick up more patients. We are going to check pulse rhythm and rate in every patient coming in for influenza vaccine this autumn.

·         checking urine in everyone with anaemia

·         reduced my prescription of antibiotics

·         Oh there are so many. I found the section on GCA and PMR v useful and has changed the way I managed 2 patients.

·         I did an audit to see how many patients were co-prescribed tamoxifen and paroxetine/ fluoxetine. I changed their antidepressents. It would be terrible after a woman’s fight with breast cancer for me to give something that would make her tamoxifen work less. There were 3 patients in my Practice. I educated the rest of the team and have re-audited recently. Now there are no patients being co-prescribed these medications

·         We are trying to bring patients with multiple morbidity to one clinic rather than separate clinics

·         Development of diagnosis support tool for vertigo and recommending the booklet balance retraining which hopefully will reduce some of our ENT referrals