The Rise of E-Learning – the National Online Training Programme (NOTP)

 It’s been a long-time coming, but, it’s finally here!  This is an amazing resource for paediatric surgical trainees of all levels and variations and accessed at https://pgvle.co.uk/ (sign up by sending your name, GMC number and NHS email address to [email protected]).

It is NHS-England funded and endorsed by all the usual suspects with a declared aim to “house all of the theoretical knowledge needed to pass the Paediatric Surgery FRCS by 2027”.   So how do they “house” it.  Well, by delivering bite-sized chunks of knowledge in three ways:

• Webinars that are delivered monthly by UK-based consultants.
  • Look forward, for instance to Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia by Mr Haitham Dagash (Leicester) on 1st April 2025 (I don’t think the date is relevant!).
• Podcasts. There are three currently on the website, including a very professional one on Ingested Foreign Bodies by Sophie Lewis (Paediatric Surgery National Online Training Fellow) and Mr Robin Garrett-Cox (Bristol).
• Miscellaneous Discussions with Consultants and a Resource library
  • There is a lot on the website, some internal, some linking to external sources. It is very variable resource though, so I jumped straight to hepatobiliary of course and was seduced by “Jorge Bezerra – Advances in Biliary Atresia” who is very definitely a world expert on the subject. However the podcast was hosted by two very excitable American trainees –  Jennifer Lee and Temara Hajjat who relayed their life stories, interest in drumming, preferred weekend walks before the actual appearance of Jorge.
  • Shout out, of course, to the e-PIPS series of podcasts by Hemanshoo Thakkar (Evelina, London).  These are much more focussed and wide-ranging.

There is also a repository of more exam-based professional content, quite rightly as it is such a central part of the training environment. For instance, there is a link to the Paediatric Surgical Curriculum (2021) – a living testament to the sweat and endeavour of Liam McCarthy, Ashok Rajimwhale, Andrew Robb and Ewan Brownlee. https://www.iscp.ac.uk/media/1107/paediatric-surgery-curriculum-aug-2021-approved-oct-20.pdf

There are aspirations to create a question-bank suitable for what is the latest iteration of the ISCP examination, though it won’t obviously be the real thing.

All in all, this resource needs to be more widely known and used among the UK trainee community.  I think there is a restriction on access to the website for overseas people as you have to have a GMC number to sign-up which is a bit of a shame… but watch this space for developments on that front!

Remember, as Shakespeare said in Henry VI, Part 2 – “Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”.

Curated by

Mark Davenport 

Editor

Esther Westwood

NOTP Honorary Digital Fellow