Enhancing General Practitioners Participation in a Virtual Community of Practice for Continuing Medical Education: An Exploratory Study

As sources of medical information grow online, Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs) have evolved into a potential tool that allows General Practitioners (GPs) to interact through the sharing of their experience and knowledge. However, literature reports that GPs are reluctant to participate in VCoPs especially for their continuing medical education (CME). Currently, no study has explored the design and structural aspects of VCoPs that may lead to enhancing GPs' participation in such online communities. Hence, this paper explores how GPs envisage the use of a VCoP for their CME and how to enhance their participation by conducting an exploratory qualitative study of two focus groups with 10 GPs in each group, accompanied by a specialist and a nurse. Our empirical findings identified two key contributions: i) seven themes that need to be incorporated in the VCoP to enable and support GP's CME through the use of a VCoP; ii) three recommendations to take into consideration for researchers when evaluating VCoPs for CME.