A new eLearning program for arthritis aims to provide GPs and other health professionals with easy to access guidance for best practice care.
The Arthritis Training, Learning and Upskilling (ATLAS) tool was led by Arthritis Australia and developed with experts across the country, including from Arthritis and Osteoporosis WA and Curtin University, in response to gaps in arthritis care.
It includes interactive eLearning modules backed by research and lived experience.
Curtin University professor of musculoskeletal health Andrew Briggs said ATLAS was designed to help overcome professional learning barriers to support best practice.
“If you’re a busy health professional, you’ve been in clinic all day, the last thing you probably want to do is go to a professional development course… and if you’re in the bush you often can’t access it,” he told Medical Forum.
“It’s in modular, small chunks of content so you can just do bits here and there as your schedule allows… and you can do it at whatever time, at whatever place and whatever speed you want to.
“It’s trying to have maximum flexibility to allow learning at a person’s own rate.”
Arthritis is one of the highest costs to the Australian health system, with annual direct healthcare expenditure on osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis exceeding $5.26 billion and is estimated to increase to $7.77 billion by 2040, according to Arthritis Australia.
Much of this cost is driven by joint replacement surgery for osteoarthritis, projected to increase to unsustainable levels with the volume of total knee and hip replacements increasing by 276% and 208%, respectively, by 2030 at a cost of $5.32 billion.
The number of Australians with arthritis is projected to increase from 4.11 million in 2025 to 5.39 million in 2040, of which more than 1.1 million will be of working age.
We know in WA that access to rheumatologists is challenging, particularly paediatric rheumatologists, and in the bush they are even harder to access,” Professor Briggs said.
“If you can provide the primary care workforce with skills and knowledge of best practice care for rheumatoid arthritis, that’s going to potentially improve people’s access to care and quality care.
“If more healthcare practitioners can identify people and get them to the right care earlier then that’s a big saving for person and health system.”
Chief executive of Arthritis and Osteoporosis WA Rick Forlano said person-centred care was at the heart of the organisations input.
“We have designed ATLAS for busy health professionals and students from a variety of disciplines and career stages, as a flexible and practical evidence-based resource to help them meet their professional goals,” he said.
“One of our core mandates was to ensure that the course was person-centred – where people are assessed from a multi-disciplinary perspective and their individual goals are always the main consideration.”
Arthritis Australia said ATLAS has been crafted to be relevant across all health disciplines and has the potential to be used in undergraduate and postgraduate study.
Link to tool: https://atlasarthritis.com.au/