The Impact of a Real-Life Inflammatory Bowel Disease Education Course for Brazilian Physicians from the Perspective of Its Participants

Abstract

Background: Physicians must acquire the necessary skills to provide Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients with state-of-the - art clinical care, aiming to improve patient’s quality of life and disease outcomes. Purpose: To describe the queries and experiences of doctors enrolled in an IBD education course and to evaluate the impact of the course. Methods: A retrospective study included 100 physicians, of which 78 attended the course. A questionnaire was applied evaluating how the course had an impact on their IBD-knowledge. The 20-hour-course consisted of practical “real-life” activities and theoretical discussions. Results: The majority of doctors’ expertise was in gastroenterology (53%) and coloproctology (44%). A significant portion had no experience with biological therapy for ulcerative colitis (19.4%) or Crohn’s disease (5.05%). The main topics doctors wanted to discuss were biological therapy (93%), new drugs (74%) and differential diagnosis (64%). A considerable number of physicians did not feel confident at prescribing biological therapy before the course (44.4%), a percentage that decreased to 8.5% after the course (p < 0.0001). The impact of the course was considered high (grades 9 and 10) by most of the participants (78.2%). Discussion: The ideal course should have a practical and theoretical component, as well as the support of an experienced multidisciplinary team. A real-life practical-theoretical IBD course proved a success at increasing IBD knowledge.