Swansea medic to boost young doctors’ arthritis awareness
A Swansea University-based medic is aiming to improve the way trainee doctors in Wales learn about arthritis - and to make sure enough medics become specialists in the condition in the future.
Although arthritis affects seven million people in the UK, and accounts for one in five of all visits to the GP, it is acknowledged that doctors do not know enough about the condition and receive insufficient training during their student years.
Now Dr Stefan Siebert, a clinical senior lecturer at Swansea University has been awarded funding of £28,000 from leading medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign to produce a special e-learning package to help boost young doctors’ knowledge by helping them to learn about arthritis on-line.
“There’s already considerable evidence that, despite the high frequency of arthritis and musculoskeletal disorders among medical in-patients, examination of the musculoskeletal system is often inadequate or omitted during the training of junior doctors,” explained Dr Siebert.
“Postgraduate medical education is undergoing a major reform, which poses significant challenges for rheumatology (the treatment of arthritis and related conditions) as a specialty. There is potential for an adverse effect on training and recruitment in the “smaller” specialities, particularly those predominantly concerned with the management of chronic diseases and a genuine risk that fewer trainees will choose rheumatology as a career choice, impacting on future recruitment.”
Dr Siebert added that there was a need and an opportunity to be proactively involved in ensuring appropriate rheumatology training for the entire spectrum of junior doctors.
Dr Siebert plans to develop an on-line rheumatology module that will be accessible to all junior doctors in Wales, at any time and at any computer. It is expected that this self-directed learning resource will eventually become applicable to trainee doctors throughout the UK.
The module will cover common conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, back pain and gout, available drugs, treatment and examination. It will also serve as a “gateway” to other on-line information, including patient support groups.
A spokeswoman for the Arthritis Research Campaign, which funds more than £2m of research in Swansea and Cardiff, said: “The education of medical students and junior doctors - as well as patients - is our second major remit after research. It remains of great concern to us that despite the huge numbers of people who have arthritis and musculoskeletal-related conditions they are not given priority in medical schools and many junior doctors have minimal knowledge and expertise in this important area.
“We are currently funding several projects to try and improve this situation, and hope that Dr Siebert’s e-learning package will have a significant impact.”
