How do you design online learning that general practitioners and family healthcare professionals genuinely want to use – particularly when they may only have a few minutes between patients?
In this webinar, Professor Simon Gregory, Medical Director for Integrated and Primary Care for NHS England Workforce, Training and Education, and Sabeen Altaf, eLearning and Relationship Manager at the Royal College of General Practitioners, explore what effective online learning looks like for GPs and primary care teams. Their discussion covers everything from just-in-time learning and bite-sized content to clinical authenticity, quality assurance and the continuing importance of human expertise.
Watch The Webinar
Here are three themes for anyone designing, commissioning or managing online learning for healthcare professionals.
Design learning for when clinicians actually need it
· Clinicians need learning in different circumstances. Simon identifies three broad timeframes: just-in-time learning needed during or around a consultation; timely learning prompted by a patient encounter and undertaken shortly afterwards; and proactive learning linked to CPD, appraisal or personal development.
· Those different needs call for different types of resource. A clinician who needs to refresh their knowledge before their next patient requires something very different from someone undertaking planned professional development.
· Bite-sized content matters. Sabeen explains that the RCGP is moving away from modules longer than 30 minutes, while focused topics can be addressed through resources as short as five-minute screencasts.
· Learning should support a “dip in, dip out” approach, allowing clinicians to navigate directly to the section they need and return to it later rather than having to work through a resource from beginning to end.
· Searchability is part of the learning experience. Clear taxonomy and effective organisation help clinicians find relevant information quickly when they are working under pressure.
· Asynchronous learning also gives clinicians more control, allowing them to fit development around clinical commitments, out-of-hours work and responsibilities outside work.
Build trust, relevance and authenticity into the content
· For clinical learning, trust in the source is fundamental. That applies both to the reputation of the organisation providing a resource and to confidence in the accuracy of the content itself.
· Learners also value knowing who created the content. Simon highlights the importance of visible authorship and being able to establish that the person behind the learning genuinely has expertise in the subject.
· Clinical expertise needs to be combined with an understanding of the learner’s working environment. The RCGP’s principle of learning being “written for GPs by GPs” helps ensure that content reflects the realities of generalist practice rather than simply presenting specialist knowledge.
· Realistic case studies and patient stories can make learning easier to relate to practice. If scenarios feel contrived or inconsistent with clinicians’ experience, they risk creating disengagement rather than supporting learning.
· Patients can contribute to that authenticity too. Sabeen describes involving patient groups during the scoping of some resources, helping to shape cases and bring a stronger human perspective to the learning.
· Quality needs to be built into the development process. The RCGP approach includes expert authorship, clinical editing, peer review, medical director oversight, specialist learning design and further review of the finished resource before publication.
Give learners flexibility – without losing the human element
· Different people and different subjects lend themselves to different learning formats. A broader topic might require a structured module and case studies, while a specific issue could be better suited to a short screencast or podcast.
· Offering several modes around the same subject gives clinicians greater choice: they can undertake deeper learning when they have the time or use a shorter resource when they need a focused refresher.
· Online learning should make use of what digital delivery can offer. Simply putting a presentation online and reading through the slides misses opportunities for
interaction, assessment, animation and more engaging ways of presenting information.
· Assessment can help establish whether learning has actually happened. Sabeen describes using pre- and post-learning questions, alongside opportunities for reflection on how learning might affect practice.
· Learning should also build on what clinicians already know. Simon advocates a spiral curriculum, where professionals develop their knowledge over time rather than repeatedly completing the same basic material simply to satisfy a mandatory requirement.
· As AI becomes more widely used, human oversight remains essential. Errors in apparently AI-generated content can quickly undermine confidence in an entire resource, while clinical learning still depends heavily on human judgement, expertise, empathy and communication.
Watch the full webinar above to hear about these themes in much greater depth, with practical examples showing how online learning can become more accessible, trusted and useful within the realities of everyday clinical practice.
