Impact of skin cancer education on general practitioners' diagnostic skills

Seventeen general practitioners (GPs) were evaluated to assess their abilit y to recognize malignant, borderline and benign skin lesions before and aft er a novel, cheap and quick skin cancer educational programme. They were te sted without prior warning on two occasions using two sets of 30 clinical s lides. Between each test the GPs were given a lecture based on an illustrat ed booklet of similar lesions. The results showed an improvement in the GPs ' diagnostic skills (P<0.05), but nevertheless a wide variation in diagnost ic ability between GPs remained. Our study highlights a simple, effective a nd inexpensive method for teaching GPs the diagnostic clinical features of skin cancer. Further work is needed to improve their diagnostic accuracy in the long term.