Crohn’s & Colitis – GP Aware Project

Australian General Practice Accreditation Limited (AGPAL) is proud to be partnering with Crohn’s & Colitis Australia (CCA) and the Gastroenterological Society of Australia (GESA) to co-develop Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) training resources for the ‘GP Aware Project‘.

The training resources will provide education and support for GPs to participate in IBD management more effectively.
The AGPAL & QIP Education and Training Team is working with GPs from around the country to form educational focus groups. The focus groups work to gather information to improve patient care for those who have Crohn’s Disease and Chronic Colitis. The focus group’s outcomes will become the fundamental beginnings of developing tailored training and resources to clinicians’ needs.

To help GPs better understand and manage patients with IBD, the team aim to:

• design and implement a campaign promoting existing health practitioner guidelines for IBD management,
• develop an IBD specific Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for GPs and generalist gastroenterologists,
• develop and promote the use of individual care plans for IBD management in primary and specialist care settings, and
• collect data, monitoring and evaluating the utilisation of resources.

Main activities include:

1. Identification of barriers and enablers to the effective use of current management protocols and relevant gaps in information
2. Implementation of a program to increase awareness of appropriate management protocols
3. Development and promotion of IBD Continuing Professional Development training and educational resources

AGPAL has thus far completed a comprehensive literature review of the black and grey literature identifying IBD guidelines and management protocols currently used by GPs and gastroenterologists. We are now partway through conducting surveys and focus group discussions with GPs and gastroenterologists nationally, to obtain further information about healthcare professionals’ use of IBD guidelines and management protocols and seek their input into developing new training resources.

Once developed, the resources will be complimentary and available to all healthcare providers from mid-2021.

Updates to the project will be added to this news section as they become available.