The fortnightly podcast, launched on Friday 24 March, provides key learning points drawn from MIMS Learning’s comprehensive bank of CPD learning modules, interviews with expert clinicians, and research-based learning nuggets.
The first episode discusses how appraisal requirements have changed over the last three years, reviews how GPs can improve the NHS carbon footprint by reducing emissions from asthma inhalers, and looks at how air pollution affects both physical and mental health.
Dr Ravi Ramanathan, GPonline’s GP adviser and an experienced GP appraiser, provides personal insights into the current requirements for appraisal and revalidation. In the interview, Dr Ramanathan comments: ‘I’ve always believed that the easiest way of presenting for appraisal is to undertake your learning on a regular basis and keep a record of that, because it’s incredibly stressful to be at the last minute writing up an appraisal and trying to discover all the things that you’ve done over the past year.’
Also in this episode, MIMS Learning editor Pat Anderson outlines the key learning points of the CPD module ‘Reducing emissions from inhalers’ by Dr Pipin Singh. Inhalers alone are responsible for 3% of the NHS carbon footprint. Acknowledging that 3% may not seem much in the grand scheme of things, Pat observes that reducing emissions from inhalers is at least something GPs ‘can do’.
She comments: ‘If you try to reduce the NHS carbon footprint as a whole, as an individual GP, I think you are going to feel swamped quite quickly…. Dr Singh advises, in the module, that if you just take one part of the puzzle, such as supporting patients to switch to a more sustainable inhaler, and focus on that, then you could achieve something.’
In a research-based section of the episode, Pat discusses the effect of air pollution on physical and mental health with MIMS Learning medical editors Sangeeta Krishnan and Dawn Liz Powell. They review a study that indicates air pollution is associated with lung cancer in ‘never smokers’, research that suggests exposure to diesel fumes could negatively affect mental health, and what is being done to reduce air pollution.
Sangeeta, in the episode, notes: ‘There are so many little ways in which we, as individuals, can help to reduce air pollution and contribute to cleaner air… maybe we could walk more, ride a bike, or take public transport.’
The podcast is available on all the main podcast platforms and is also available, free of charge, on the MIMS Learning website.
