Welcome to the CAPRE Program

Further development will happen in three ways. Most important will be from you, the participants: suggestions and advice as to how we make the program more useful for you. The second way is by the monthly addition of new critiques of different topics. The third way is by continuous update of the automatic literature searches which support the physician and patient advice components when new information or understanding is added.

We believe that one of the unique features of this program is the "Automatic Literature Search." This program was developed by University of Toronto's Department of Family Medicine departmental librarian, Rita Shaughnessy in collaboration with librarians at the University of Toronto. A literature search strategy has been constructed for every topic in the program. Whenever you access a topic, by clicking on the Literature Search link, this search will automatically be done on Medline via PubMed within seconds. This allows you to identify any articles on the topic that are important that have been published since the last dated search was done. Every topic records the date of the last search on which the information is based. This feature allows you to keep the critically appraised information that you use right up to date. You can find the actual search strategy recorded on the PubMed search template by clicking on the "Details" button on the search results page.

We hope that you will find helpful the concept of providing the patient with critically appraised information to consider and then returning to you to decide which strategy is best for them. In very controversial areas such as PSA testing or HRT, this approach definitely saves you time and makes the patient feel that they had more say in the decision making process. Patient involvement in decision-making has been demonstrated to lead to higher patient satisfaction with their health care and also makes it more likely that they will follow the decision that has been made.

We hope that students and residents will use the program freely. The only payment is for practicing physicians who wish to obtain Mainpro-C or AAFP study credits for their participation.

It is also hoped that patients will be encouraged to access the web site. The information contained in this program must be accepted by patients; otherwise, the benefits of evidence are unlikely to reach the majority of people.

We invite you to enjoy using the program. However you use it, please tell us what you did or did not like about the format or content so that we can continually improve our ability to assist you in your learning. Please feel free to call us at (613) 533-2540 or e-mail us at cmemed@post.queensu.ca.

Walter W. Rosser, MD, CCFP, FCFP, MRCGP Course Director