Innovative Online GP Education Program To Tackle Major National Health Risks

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Also Included In: Medical Students / Training
Article Date: 15 Jan 2009 - 1:00 PDT

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The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), in collaboration with the Heart Foundation, has launched an innovative high quality online learning activity to assist general practitioners (GPs) and other primary health care professionals to tackle key behavioural/lifestyle risk factors that impact on the health of our patients: smoking, nutrition, alcohol and physical activity.

The online activity, called Implementing Lifestyle Changes, has been developed through an educational grant from the Heart Foundation funded by the NSW Health Department. The learning activity is now available through the RACGP's online education portal gplearning at www.gplearning.com.au. Category 1 QA&CPD points apply for GPs.

"Helping patients to adopt a healthy lifestyle is the bread and butter of general practice: we are ideally placed to help patients make behavioural changes that can boost their health. GPs and our teams play a key role in providing advice on quitting smoking, better nutrition, reducing alcohol intake and increasing physical activity," said Dr Chris Mitchell, RACGP President, and GP in Northern NSW.

"As these lifestyle factors are so important in disease prevention, making this learning activity online increases the accessibility and availability to general practices across the nation. That is GPs can complete it anywhere at any time. For a rural GP like myself, I can access this program from my home or practice without having to travel to a major centre to learn about this critical topic area. It's not surprising that more and more GPs are embracing high quality online education.

"As we have regular contact with our patients over long periods of time, general practice - armed with the latest evidenced based skills - is best placed to assess when a patient is ready to make lifestyle changes and to support them to make those changes.

"Smoking, diet, alcohol and a lack of physical activity are associated with major preventable health diseases, such as cardiovascular disease. With the right mix of skills, we can work with our patients to help them develop sustainable behaviour changes to improve their health in the long term.

"If we can help Australians everywhere to change behaviour, we can make major in roads to improving the health of our nation through preventing some of the most common diseases of our community," said Dr Mitchell.

For more information about the new online activity, visit http://www.gplearning.com.au.

Additional information on managing lifestyle risk factors, visit , a population health guide to behavioural risk factors in general practice at http://www.racgp.org.au/guidelines/snap

For more information about the Heart Foundation, visit http://www.heartfoundation.org.auor call 1300 36 27 87.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is responsible for maintaining standards for quality clinical practice, education and training, and research in Australian general practice. The RACGP has the largest general practitioner membership of any medical organisation in Australia and represents the majority of Australia's general practitioners.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. "Innovative Online GP Education Program To Tackle Major National Health Risks." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 15 Jan. 2009. Web.
15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/135497.php>

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APA

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. (2009, January 15). "Innovative Online GP Education Program To Tackle Major National Health Risks." Medical News Today. Retrieved from
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