Educating primary care physicians about eating disorders: Pilot data from a microlearning programme.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Mental Health Training
• General Practice

Background:

• General practitioners (GPs) are the first point of contact for mental health concerns, but often miss eating disorders (EDs).
• Limited GP training in EDs is a barrier to early detection and intervention.
• A microlearning program was developed to address these training gaps for busy GPs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot and evaluate a microlearning program for general practitioners (GPs) on identifying and managing eating disorders (EDs).
• To assess the effectiveness of microlearning in improving GP knowledge, confidence, and willingness to treat EDs.

Main Methods:

• 51 Australian GPs completed a 6-10 week online microlearning program with 10 case studies on ED care.
• Participants completed pre- and post-program questionnaires assessing knowledge, confidence, skills, and willingness to treat.
• Evaluations captured overall experience and perceived applicability of microlearning.

Main Results:

• All 51 GPs completed the program; 40 provided evaluation data.
• Significant improvements were reported in GP skills, confidence, willingness-to-treat, and knowledge regarding EDs.
• 97.5% found microlearning effective for learning about EDs, with 87.5% applying learned skills in practice.

Conclusions:

• Microlearning is an acceptable and effective training method for GPs to manage complex mental health conditions like EDs.
• The flexibility of microlearning makes it a promising solution for training time-constrained healthcare professionals.
• Future research should broaden the sample to assess the scalability of microlearning for ED training.