www.bmjlearning.com

The British Medical Journal organisation (BMJ Group) has been notably proactive in providing high quality CME and associated services for its members over the last five to 10 years. They were also one of the first organisations to offer fully free-text access to its flagship journal the BMJ, albeit having less than philanthropically reversed its policy over more recent years. But they also were among the earliest "explorers" of the e-journal and have had a dedicated subsidiary e-BMJ running in parallel to its print version for several years.

As part of its range of online products BMJ Learning appeared last year and offers a selection of CME services - mainly perhaps to members of the British Medical Association - but there is also an international version of BMJ Learning which is free of charge.

The free modules in BMJ Learning cover a very wide range of primary-care orientated topics which are regularly updated and also allows for a CME diary to be run alongside the activities, which can make auditing easier when we put in our own MOPS diaries.

While the full version of BMJ Learning costs UK£70 per annum, the free international version is also quite valuable. The range of topics is comprehensive and includes such headings as those under the haematology section, eg, arterial blood gases, a guide to interpretation; deep vein thrombosis, diagnosis and treatment; how to reverse the effects of warfarin in hospital practice, an update; lipid management, pitfalls in testing and treatment; maintaining patients on anticoagulants; malaria, an update on management; prevention of hospital acquired venous thromboembolism; subarachnoid haemorrhage, diagnosis and management.

There is a wide range of around 70 mainly clinical topics (of which haematology is just one example) and these include additional and perhaps less clinically oriented issues as screening programmes, communications, ethics and law, good clinical care, health and performance of colleagues, management and IT skills, professional development, relationships with patients, service development and working with colleagues. Within all of these are some 330 learning modules which are freely accessible to use at no cost.

Information not just for GPs

The learning resources deal with everyday issues in both primary care and hospital medicine, they are evidence based and are kept up to date. BMJ Learning claims to cater for a wide range of health professionals in addition to GPs - hospital doctors, GP trainees, practice nurses, practice managers, receptionists etc.

As GPs we can be expected to learn about appraisal and revalidation; to be able to use the evidence-based and up to date learning resources; to be able to use the learning needs assessment tools to find out what we might need to know; and to plan and record our learning so we can track our progress over time.

Practice nurses might better plan their learning needs; they might use the evidence based and up to date learning resources that are tailored to nursing needs. There are modules on smoking cessation and on leg ulcers and a range of other chronic diseases which have traditionally had a strong nursing management base.

Practice managers and receptionists might use the learning resources that cover issues such as how to deal with complaints, how to comply with the Privacy Act (the Data Protection Act in the UK) and maybe even how to deal with difficult colleagues together with the ability to plan and record learning needs so progress can be tracked over time.

A notable feature of the articles is the proportion written by GPs - somewhat along the lines of New Zealand Family Physician - and accordingly the modules are very focused on our needs. Included in many of the articles is an interesting statement of intent - "Why I wrote this article".

There is also the capacity to submit an article by a GP within the site and this can be a great opportunity for those in our profession with a detailed knowledge base of a subspeciality interest which they feel would be useful to disperse to a wider primary care audience.