Meeting the educational needs of general practitioners for epilepsy

Epilepsy care in general practice has been criticized, but what do GPs feel they deal with most and complete satisfactorily? Lf criticism is justified , education should be useful in improving epilepsy care, but what do genera l practitioners want to learn and how do they want to learn it? Questionnai res about these issues were sent to randomly chosen general practitioners t hroughout the United Kingdom. One hundred and twenty-four out of 200 (62%) responded. They were not biased by age, sex, type of practice or previous i nterest in epilepsy. Drug treatment and regular review were the two areas o f care GPs said they dealt with most, but only half felt they dealt with th em well. Sixty-six percent wanted to learn more about drug treatment, 46% a bout Lifestyle advice, 45% about non-drug treatment, 44% about diagnosis an d only 16% did not want to learn more about any aspect of care. Weekdays an d evenings were the preferred times for study. Courses up to one full day a way from practices were popular, distance learning and personal education p lans were not, except for a group of younger GPs. When attending courses mu lti-disciplinary lectures rated highly and nearly three-quarters preferred to attend courses where epilepsy was covered in conjunction with other cond itions. Future epilepsy education for GPs should recognize these findings i f attendance and positive outcomes are to be maximized.