Two new sessions uploaded this week

In the past week we have uploaded sessions on why patients are sometimes dissatisfied with the outcome of their surgery and on the embryology of the head and neck. You will now find these live and accessible on the website. Many thanks to the authors.

Module 1 Essentials of Plastic Surgery is now virtually complete, apart from a handful of sessions where we have some image copyright issues to resolve and one where I was badly let down by an author. Module 2 Surgical Principles is fully allocated and much of the content is now with the Instructional Designers.

This week was a single e-LPRAS day for me. I was editing sessions on bites in the upper limb and fat transfer, both of which are in great shape (thanks Nicholas and Patrick). I also signed off a session on the management of regional lymph nodes in sarcoma, which will go live as soon as we have resolved some image copyright issues. A few new authors have been allocated sessions to work on too.

Next week I am off to BAPRAS Council to give them an update on the project. I have some exciting news to tell them and I'll share it here after the meeting.

This blog has been resurrected

When I first set up the blog I was getting excited about the launch of the first sessions online. Since then I have completely neglected to keep it up to date. I propose to correct this by sending out weekly blogs about the progress of the project and the titles of new sessions that have gone live.

The sessions for Module 1 (Surgical Principles) are not mostly built and online. Plastic surgery trainees should be finding this to be a useful introduction to the subject and a concise revision tool. We are now working on Module 2 with the aim of having all the sessions online next year. There are random other sessions being written and designed from the other 7 modules.

Last week saw a session on Peripheral Nerve Tumours and another on Osseointegrated Implants go live.

Don't forget that you can register with the project or access your learning materials on: http://www.e-lfh.org.uk/projects/plastic-reconstructive-and-aesthetic-surgery/access-the-e-learning/

Thank you BAPRAS Council members!!!

I am really delighted to announce that BAPRAS Council has agreed to fund the e-LPRAS project through to completion.  I attended their meeting last week and made a presentation to support the Business Plan that I submitted for their consideration. This is a really generous offer and represents a major financial contribution by our professional association. I am very grateful to all the Council members for their support.

This means that we will be able to recruit  one more full time Instructional Designer from January 2012 to work alongside Stephen Gibbons, who becomes Lead Instructional Designer. He will spend some of his time supervising the work of the new ID  but will continue to work on sessions himself. I will also increase to 1.5 days per week (in reality one day and two days on alternating weeks). We aim to complete the project by the end of 2017.

BAPRAS  members will be asked to consider a motion at the AGM in December to increase the rate of funding (although the final cost remains unchanged) to allow completion by end of 2015. This will be a big financial commitment and Council felt (very appropriately in my opinion) that there should be wider discussion among members before this was agreed.

Once I have caught up with all those jobs I had to put off while I wrote the Business Plan, I will be sending out new topics for which we will need authors. If you have not written anything yet but would like to do so, please get in touch. We are looking for an international faculty to help us to produce an international learning resource, so please get in touch to discuss how you can help. We provide full support for authors, many of whom have never written for e-learning before. I can assure you that it is easy to learn (after all I did!!!)

Of course, this can only happen because we have a wonderful bunch of content authors already and my heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who has supported the project to date. I look forward to working with all of you in the future.

Progress with Module 1

Work continues on writing sessions for Module One while we await the decision of BAPRAS Council with regard to future funding. I'm delighted to report that all of the sessions for the first module have been allocated to authors and more than half have now been returned for editing and building into the online format. Now that I have finished and submitted the Business Plan I can concentrate on the very pleasant task of lightly editing the content that has been written.

One of the most amazing features of e-LPRAS is the very high quality of the work being submitted. I always knew that plastic surgeons were high-achievers and all-round performers. That has never been so clear to me as it is now. Our authors come from a broad cross-section - relatively junior trainees (with consultants as senior authors), senior trainees, consultants and some colleagues from other specialities. A team of clinical psychologists has completed a number of sessions for Module One and then gobbled up all the other sessions that have a psychology focus from the other, yet-to-be-released modules. Gemma from Changing Faces has contributed a couple of really excellent sessions on the patient's perspective and the role of support groups.

So thank you to all our talented contributors. Let's keep the  momentum up and get the whole of Module One online this year for launch at Winter BAPRAS. As soon as I get a decision from BAPRAS Council I will release another batch of sessions to be written. There will be a round robin to everyone on my emailing list so if you have not contacted me yet, please do so.

Best wishes from your very happy Clinical Lead!

Business Plan now complete

I have spent the past few weeks writing a Business Plan to apply to BAPRAS Council for funding to continue the project. This has been a big task but it is now complete and the document (all 40 pages) is now off to BAPRAS to be included in the Council papers for their next meeting at the end of September. Hopefully I will have convinced them that e-LRAS is a really important project that is worth supporting through to completion. The project team has developed some really efficient working practices and we have squeezed the budget as low as we can get it, but the cost to complete is still around £1M. This is a lot of money in anyone's eyes, even though it will be split into smaller annual amounts. We are now entirely dependent on the vision and generosity of BAPRAS to enable us to finish the project. I have a presentation to make at the Council meeting and then we will have a decision. Watch this space...

Review of the week

Well, it's been a really busy week at the BAPRAS Summer Meeting in Oxford. The e-LPRAS project has been well-received by all those attendees who have dropped by the stand to talk to us. There  have also been discussions about the new ISCP curriculum for plastic surgery. We are confident that our material will continue to match the new curriculum. Completion of relevant e-LPRAS sessions will be excellent evidence that trainees are meeting the knowledge requirements of ISCP.

The really good news is that the sessions for Module 1 of the e-LPRAS project (Essentials of Plastic Surgery) have all been allocated to authors. We are therefore on schedule to be able to launch that module on line by the end of this year!

Thank you to everyone who has volunteered to help. As I said in my talk on e-learning at the meeting, the project will only be successful if we all feel ownership of it.

e-LPRAS at BAPRAS

It has been a fantastic week at the Summer BAPRAS meeting in Oxford. Steve and I have been manning the e-LPRAS stand in the exhibitors hall and we have been very excited by the interest of all plastic surgeons. We have also recruited a lot of new authors and potential authors. Module 1 now has only 4 sessions needing a content editor - so if you want to get involved before the end of this year, now is the time to get in touch.

The quality of the content being returned to us has far surpassed what we were hoping for. Steve is busy turning the content into a format that is engaging and interesting, using the best instructional and educational design principles. Although we have been sending authors a Powerpoint template, some have found it easier to write in Word and Steve has been just as successful in using this material.

We still hope to release the content for Module 1 (Essentials of Plastic Surgery) on-line before the end of the year. Watch this spot for more news!