Your logbook needs you!

Published: 10/08/2022 | Author: Dr Toni Brunning and Dr Adam Brayne

Since its launch in August 2018 the Lifelong Learning Platform (LLP) has undergone an unprecedented amount of change. As well as adding the new Anaesthetic and ACCS 2021 curricula in August 2021, it now also supports CPD Learners for Revalidation, FICM users and automatically updates member details via our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

The platform continues to receive extremely high levels of use, supporting the career lifecycle of over 24,000 fellows and members in the UK. Currently more than 20,000 of these have used the LLP for assessments and documenting their training.

With the recent addition of the above functionality, the LLP has grown significantly in complexity, and with this growth has come an increase in the number of issues and bugs being reported.

As part of ongoing improvement work for the LLP, two user surveys were undertaken earlier this year. These closed on 1 May 2022 and the feedback received has been reviewed and analysed. We are very grateful to everyone who took the time to complete these. Survey one received 678 responses and the more complex survey two received 329 responses.

The conclusions from the surveys will be used in conjunction with the LLP Technical Review, to identify areas within the LLP that are most urgently in need of change. It has helped us to prioritise a programme of development work to improve the user experience and long-term sustainability of the LLP.

One aspect that featured highly in the surveys as an area to be improved, was the logbook. The surveys showed that just over 80 per cent of respondents use the logbook but only 36 per cent are satisfied with its functionality.

There are some simple alterations that the team are aware are needed, for example setting default answers to date, unit of age, regional, procedures and significant events. We are also aware of a bug in some user accounts that affect the output into the logbook summary report.

In addition to these we are aware of the need to update the available options in the drop down lists for anaesthetic performed, specialty, operation, regional and procedures, to better reflect modern anaesthetic practice and have a closer alignment to the new curricula. We would welcome your suggestions for these areas.

In addition to those areas we are also interested in receiving your feedback on usability, reporting, and ‘quick wins.’ We would really like help from our members at improving these areas of the LLP. We are asking members to email suggestions/additions/amendments to a dedicated LLP Logbook account: logbook@rcoa.ac.uk.

This email account will remain active until the end of 2022 and will allow the team to collate suggested changes from users specifically for logbook functionality. These will then be reviewed and incorporated into the alterations to the logbook as part of the LLP improvement project.

Please note that this email is only for suggesting changes and that individual replies will not be possible. For specific queries relating to your user account continue to use the lifelong@rcoa.ac.uk email address.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Dr Toni Brunning and Dr Adam Brayne, ST4 Peninsula School of Anaesthesia