e-Learning for Perioperative Care

Dr Anne-Marie Bougeard
RCoA Perioperative Medicine Fellow

Anne-Marie Bougeard is an anaesthetic trainee in Wessex and RCoA Perioperative Medicine Fellow. She has until recently been a less than full time trainee, with two young children, and taken time out of programme to work in obstetric anaesthesia in western Australia. Anne-Marie’s interest in perioperative care comes from her background in Medicine. 

One of the key aims of CPOC is to support professionals from across the perioperative pathway in developing the knowledge base to underpin their practice. In anaesthesia and pain medicine this has been provided for a number of years by e-Learning for Anaesthesia (e-LA) and e-Pain, two very successful online resources hosted by the e-learning for health (e-LfH) platform. We propose to develop a multidisciplinary e-learning resource to support a common curriculum in perioperative care. E-Learning for Perioperative Care (e-POC) will be one of the first proposed ‘outputs’ of CPOC, and work is already well underway.

Supporting professionals

Hosting e-POC on the e-LfH platform makes learning accessible to all professionals in the NHS. The current main users of e-LA and e-Pain are those starting out in these specialties and those sitting exams. E-POC will support these learners by covering the curriculum in perioperative care for anaesthetists, and will in addition, cross-reference and include other specialty curricula to allow shared and common learning across the specialties. In addition to the core learning outcomes, we will develop tutorials on areas of research and development, quality improvement and pathway change. We are working with experienced educators to develop content in the most dynamic and user friendly way, enabling users to link their learning to online portfolios. We have already started work with TriPOM (Trainees with an interest in Perioperative Medicine), who have written tutorials for inclusion on e-POC.

Technology and digital

E-POC will feature a variety of media for the delivery of learning, in keeping with the desire of CPOC to maximise the use of digital media to support professionals. We will be developing videos, interactive presentations, animation and reflective exercises to get people thinking and talking about the challenges they face in providing high-quality perioperative care and what solutions there may be.

Watch this space for more details on the launch of e-POC. As ever, we welcome your contributions and ideas.