Happy New Year!

The New Year is off to a good start here at e-LPRAS Towers. Sessions continue to go live with Module 1 virtually complete and Module 2 fully allocated and content from all modules coming back to us on a daily basis. Thank you to everyone who has contributed!

I am pleased to report that BAPRAS has authorised an increase in the amount of time that I am allocated to the project, which will really help with moving forwards some of the sessions that have been returned but are awaiting my review. Currently there is an 11 month  backlog but I hope to reduce that to 6 months within the next few weeks. This has partly been facilitated by grants totalling £100K received from Health Education England during the last few weeks.

We are at the stage now where we are looking to allocate new sessions to authors. So if you would like to pick something up, please get in touch. All of the generic sessions have been written but there are plenty of site specific sessions and burns topics. These modules are:

• Head and neck
• Breast and chest wall
• Upper limb
• Lower trunk
• Lower Limb
• Burns

Please send an email to elpras.project@googlemail.com if you would like to start writing something now. Your deadline would be March 2014 so please make sure that you have the time to dedicate to the project. If not please don't volunteer but wait until you have more time. The project still has a few years to run!

Equally, if you have any colleagues who would like to get involved, tell them to email me. If every plastic surgeon in the UK wrote 2 sessions the project would be finished!

Best wishes for 2014!

New sessions being added weekly

I am pleased to report that three more sessions went live on the e-lpras project web site (http://www.e-lfh.org.uk/projects/plastic-reconstructive-and-aesthetic-surgery/access-the-e-learning/). These are on:

• Adjuvant Therapy in Sarcoma
• Management of Regional Lymphadenopathy in Sarcoma
• Bites in the Upper Limb. 

This means that all of the sarcoma sessions are now online - a very good revision tool for anyone preparing for the FRCS in plastic surgery.

I am still dealing with a backlog of sessions that have been written and transformed by the instructional design team but are now in my inbox waiting to be edited. If you are waiting to find out what is happening with your session I do apologise. I have been in discussion with BAPRAS to increase my time commitment to the project (aided by an additional grant for Health Education England) so I hope that this will start to improve.

Because of the backlog I am not actively recruiting more authors at the moment but if you would like to be working on something now and you have the time to do so, please get in touch with me (elpras.project@googlemail.com). All of the generic sessions have been written but there are plenty left to write within Head & Neck, Lower Limb, Breast, Trunk, Perineum, Burns.

Another piece of good news that I would like to share with you is that the British Society for Surgery of the Hand has approached BAPRAS to assist with writing the Upper Limb module. I am delighted that we will be able to share this very valuable learning tool and look forward to working with them in the future.

Two new sessions uploaded this week

In the past week we have uploaded sessions on why patients are sometimes dissatisfied with the outcome of their surgery and on the embryology of the head and neck. You will now find these live and accessible on the website. Many thanks to the authors.

Module 1 Essentials of Plastic Surgery is now virtually complete, apart from a handful of sessions where we have some image copyright issues to resolve and one where I was badly let down by an author. Module 2 Surgical Principles is fully allocated and much of the content is now with the Instructional Designers.

This week was a single e-LPRAS day for me. I was editing sessions on bites in the upper limb and fat transfer, both of which are in great shape (thanks Nicholas and Patrick). I also signed off a session on the management of regional lymph nodes in sarcoma, which will go live as soon as we have resolved some image copyright issues. A few new authors have been allocated sessions to work on too.

Next week I am off to BAPRAS Council to give them an update on the project. I have some exciting news to tell them and I'll share it here after the meeting.

This blog has been resurrected

When I first set up the blog I was getting excited about the launch of the first sessions online. Since then I have completely neglected to keep it up to date. I propose to correct this by sending out weekly blogs about the progress of the project and the titles of new sessions that have gone live.

The sessions for Module 1 (Surgical Principles) are not mostly built and online. Plastic surgery trainees should be finding this to be a useful introduction to the subject and a concise revision tool. We are now working on Module 2 with the aim of having all the sessions online next year. There are random other sessions being written and designed from the other 7 modules.

Last week saw a session on Peripheral Nerve Tumours and another on Osseointegrated Implants go live.

Don't forget that you can register with the project or access your learning materials on: http://www.e-lfh.org.uk/projects/plastic-reconstructive-and-aesthetic-surgery/access-the-e-learning/

Thank you BAPRAS Council members!!!

I am really delighted to announce that BAPRAS Council has agreed to fund the e-LPRAS project through to completion.  I attended their meeting last week and made a presentation to support the Business Plan that I submitted for their consideration. This is a really generous offer and represents a major financial contribution by our professional association. I am very grateful to all the Council members for their support.

This means that we will be able to recruit  one more full time Instructional Designer from January 2012 to work alongside Stephen Gibbons, who becomes Lead Instructional Designer. He will spend some of his time supervising the work of the new ID  but will continue to work on sessions himself. I will also increase to 1.5 days per week (in reality one day and two days on alternating weeks). We aim to complete the project by the end of 2017.

BAPRAS  members will be asked to consider a motion at the AGM in December to increase the rate of funding (although the final cost remains unchanged) to allow completion by end of 2015. This will be a big financial commitment and Council felt (very appropriately in my opinion) that there should be wider discussion among members before this was agreed.

Once I have caught up with all those jobs I had to put off while I wrote the Business Plan, I will be sending out new topics for which we will need authors. If you have not written anything yet but would like to do so, please get in touch. We are looking for an international faculty to help us to produce an international learning resource, so please get in touch to discuss how you can help. We provide full support for authors, many of whom have never written for e-learning before. I can assure you that it is easy to learn (after all I did!!!)

Of course, this can only happen because we have a wonderful bunch of content authors already and my heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who has supported the project to date. I look forward to working with all of you in the future.

Progress with Module 1

Work continues on writing sessions for Module One while we await the decision of BAPRAS Council with regard to future funding. I'm delighted to report that all of the sessions for the first module have been allocated to authors and more than half have now been returned for editing and building into the online format. Now that I have finished and submitted the Business Plan I can concentrate on the very pleasant task of lightly editing the content that has been written.

One of the most amazing features of e-LPRAS is the very high quality of the work being submitted. I always knew that plastic surgeons were high-achievers and all-round performers. That has never been so clear to me as it is now. Our authors come from a broad cross-section - relatively junior trainees (with consultants as senior authors), senior trainees, consultants and some colleagues from other specialities. A team of clinical psychologists has completed a number of sessions for Module One and then gobbled up all the other sessions that have a psychology focus from the other, yet-to-be-released modules. Gemma from Changing Faces has contributed a couple of really excellent sessions on the patient's perspective and the role of support groups.

So thank you to all our talented contributors. Let's keep the  momentum up and get the whole of Module One online this year for launch at Winter BAPRAS. As soon as I get a decision from BAPRAS Council I will release another batch of sessions to be written. There will be a round robin to everyone on my emailing list so if you have not contacted me yet, please do so.

Best wishes from your very happy Clinical Lead!

Business Plan now complete

I have spent the past few weeks writing a Business Plan to apply to BAPRAS Council for funding to continue the project. This has been a big task but it is now complete and the document (all 40 pages) is now off to BAPRAS to be included in the Council papers for their next meeting at the end of September. Hopefully I will have convinced them that e-LRAS is a really important project that is worth supporting through to completion. The project team has developed some really efficient working practices and we have squeezed the budget as low as we can get it, but the cost to complete is still around £1M. This is a lot of money in anyone's eyes, even though it will be split into smaller annual amounts. We are now entirely dependent on the vision and generosity of BAPRAS to enable us to finish the project. I have a presentation to make at the Council meeting and then we will have a decision. Watch this space...