Treating the mental patient is really challenging - especially for general practitioners who lack the training and experience to make a good differential diagnose quickly.
To try to increase the quality in primary care attention to mental health patients, we decided to sponsor AIDFM to produce contents that would be made available nationally through an online training program.
This is still the most comprehensive eLearning programme on mental health in portuguese available on the web - over 1.800 users have registered since launch.
The challengeIn the attempt of promoting early diagnosis and clinical procedures that are nowadays considered to be the most effective for the several mental disorders, the AIDFM (Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento da Faculdade de Medicina) challenged AstraZeneca to be partners in building an eLearning platform meant for general practitioners training.
The background
Mental disorders have probably become the biggest cause of incapability and one of the most important causes of morbidity it today's society. Treating mental patients, however, is extremely challenging, specially for general practitioners. , and it is urgent to make the most out of them. Lots of the psychiatry services are flooded with patients that could and should to be followed by their family physician; while other patients, with much. And lots of general practitioners wish they has more high-quality training in the key areas of their activity, like psychiatry.
The aspiration
With this eLearning program we expected to . We would try to cover the most significant areas of mental health, and bring the Portuguese Society of Psychiatry on board to further access quality and relevance of content.
What was done?
A new brand was created, with its own visual character (by Float Healthcare). Four major modules were created - Affective Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Psychotic Disorders and Cognition Disorders - each of them with several submodules. All of them include high quality videos of psychiatrists perfectly synched with their presentation (powerpoint-like) - everything in portuguese. At the end of each module, there is a test. A certificate is delivered upon completion.
The website was launched on October 2010 - nearly 1800 registered users so far.
