There’s no better way to reinforce learning, some say, thansharing ideas with colleagues. Putting a so-called community of practice on theweb—a notion that hasn’t been widely explored—can help overcome some of thehurdles of shared learning, which often depends on parties being in the samelocale.

That’s what Boston University did with its virtual communityof practice. “Through electronic means, we were able to support individuals atremote and disparate locations through a performance-improvement activity,”said Julie White, MS, administrative director, CME, BU School of Medicine.

The activity earned the 2008 award for outstandingindustry-supported certified CME activity from the Alliance for CME. BUdeveloped, hosted and maintained the website for the community ofpractice/performance improvement component of the initiative, aimed atenhancing primary care clinicians’ ability to diagnose and treat depression.The site included a mini library of links to model programs and to otherwebsites tracking relevant research. Regular emails from BU staff, as well asfour faculty-moderated teleconferences, fueled the community.

Logistics for the non-PI portion of the activity—namely amonograph and two mostly didactic teleconferences with Q&A—were handled byHaymarket Medical Education, a division of Haymarket Media Inc. (MM&M’spublisher). Wyeth provided the grant.

Thirty-nine participants finished the PI activity, Whitereported, and chart reviews showed they boosted their rate of screening from35% pre-action plan to 60% post.

BU has another virtual community of practice initiative instore (on COPD), but, “We would love to do one on depression again,” Whitesaid. “There are many more people we would like to try to reach.”