Information management and technology should be a core part of the curriculum for training GPs, a blueprint on GP education has recommended.
The Royal College of General Practitioners has drawn up a new draft curriculum covering 14 core areas which will come into force from August 2007. The curriculum will lead to the award of a Certificate of Completion of Training and the successful doctor will in turn be eligible for entry on to the General Medical Council’s GP register. It is now out for consultation until 6 January 2006.
The new curriculum is the first ever defined for general practice and its aim is to equip GPs of the future with the skills and knowledge needed to work in the modern day NHS.
The 14 core areas include clinical management, care of older adults, care of children and young people, care of people with cancer and palliative care and personal and professional responsibilities.
IM&T is bracketed together with management in primary care but has its own 16 page ‘curriculum statement.’
Professor Steve Field, chair of the RCGP education network and architect of the curriculum, said he had personally pushed for the inclusion of a separate statement on IM&T.
He told EHI Primary Care: “I believe passionately that we need to make a separate statement because it’s so important. In the modern NHS you have to have IT skills and you need to be able to manage information.”
The statement includes the recommendation that all GP registrars should have reached at least the standard of the European Computer Driving License (ECDL) before the end of their training.
However Professor Field said he would like to go further and see completion of the ECDL as a compulsory part of undergraduate education for all European doctors.
He added: “If I had my way we would set a date in, say, five years’ time when we wouldn’t employ doctors unless they had the ECDL.”
Professor Field said that although many medical graduates now had much better IT skills than a generation ago, there were still difficulties with the overall level of IM&T expertise.
He added: “Every year we identify doctors who do have some difficulties and are not properly equipped for the new world. We are also employing more doctors from Europe and overseas who might not necessarily have the same skills.”
The statement says: “It is essential for the modern general practitioner not only to be conversant with clinical software, but also with word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, email and the World Wide Web.”
It also says that GPs should have a good knowledge of clinical coding systems, understand the criteria for good data entry, understand the application of the electronic record to analyse data and demonstrate the use of the practice’s computer system to improve the quality of care for individuals and the practice.
Other requirements in the statement are that GP registrars should be able to use IM&T to share information and coordinate patient care with other health professionals and understand the importance of practice- and community-based information in the quality assurance of each doctor’s practice
The draft curriculum has been the result of consultation with thousands of trainee and established doctors and a massive literature review. Statements for all 14 of the core curriculum areas are now available on the RCGP website. Any subsequent amendments to the curriculum proposed during the consultation will be put before the RCGP Council’s February meeting for final approval.
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