A small mouse-click for a doctor, a giant leap in healthcare

Globalization is reshaping the way we live. This is what Anthony Giddens argues throughout the 124 pages of his acclaimed book Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping our Lives[1]. However, we believe that it is not only about the way we live, but also how we live, and how we perceive life.

It is undeniable that the fast-paced development of information and communication technologies over the past 10 years has completely altered the social dynamics of society. This creates new challenges for healthcare professionals. We are now able to access an unlimited amount of information, to share it with patients, and, ultimately, to generate knowledge and wisdom from it.

This means that the current generation of “e-doctors” are now starting to view their patients more as “e-peers”. We thus consider that we are on the verge of a new era, one in which the patient--doctor relationship is built according to a new health paradigm.

It is inevitable, then, that this has implications in the model of continuous professional development of healthcare professionals. Physicians nowadays, more than ever, need not only to have regular allotted time for reflection, learning, and appraisal, but also to be prepared to constantly learn new skills, such as e-learning, electronic counselling, virtual collaborative work, and knowledge by practice.

New models of professional development, such as virtual conferences and communities of practice, social and professional networking, and e-learning platforms, are now becoming commonplace. For instance, we can draw from our experience of organizing the first ever Virtual Congress of General Practice/Family Medicine, which immersed around 1500 participants (particularly from Portuguese-speaking countries like Brazil) from 65 countries in an environment of intense learning.

General practitioners/family physicians are no longer limited to the narrow physical space of their often-isolated practices, but rather integrated in a global network of sharing, discussion, and mutual support. The motto “think global, act global” fits like a glove in Giddens's Runaway World.