About the Eating disorders training for medical students and foundation doctors programme

This training was developed in response to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) investigation into avoidable deaths from eating disorders, as outlined in recommendations from the report titled Ignoring the Alarms: How NHS Eating Disorder Services Are Failing Patients (PHSO, 2017).

It is designed to ensure that all medical students and foundation doctors are trained to understand, identify and respond appropriately when faced with a patient with a possible eating disorder. It is the result of collaboration between eating disorder charity Beat, Health Education England and the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Eating Disorders.

A survey and a review of undergraduate and postgraduate training in 2017 found that the majority of UK doctors receive less than two hours of training about eating disorders during their 10–16 years of medical training and approximately 20% do not receive any training at all (Ayton and Ibrahim, 2018).

While the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS2007) in England found that 6.4% of adults screened positive for an eating disorder.

This training programme is designed to enable doctors to:

• Identify the major eating disorders and spot the early warning signs
• Understand the role of starvation in eating disorders and the effects on the brain
• Understand common challenges experienced by clinicians identifying people with eating disorders
• Identify the occurrence of eating disorders in patients who may present with other conditions
• Understand how to assess for an eating disorder
• Understand from sufferers of eating disorders about how they confronted their illness
• Recognise the official guidance and care pathways available

Each session will take around 20-30 minutes to complete and includes additional learning resources for those looking to further increase their knowledge. The sessions also provide good preparation for those who go on to participate in medical simulation training on eating disorders.

More information about this programme and the additional resources needed to run the simulation training are available on the Beat website.

How to access

In order to access the Eating disorders training for medical students and foundation doctors programme, you will need an elfh account. If you do not have one, then you can register by selecting the Register button below.

Register >

To view the Eating disorders training for medical students and foundation doctors programme, select the View button below. If you already have an account with elfh, you will also be able to login and enrol on the programme from the View button.

View >

Not an NHS organisation?

If you are not an NHS health or care organisation and therefore do not qualify for free access elfh Hub, you may be able to access the service by creating an OpenAthens account.

To check whether or not you qualify for free access via OpenAthens, you can view the eligibility criteria and register on the ‘OpenAthens’ portal.

Registering large numbers of users

If you are a HR, IT or Practice Manager and would like to register and enrol large numbers of staff within your organisation for access onto the Eating disorders training for medical students and foundation doctors programme, please contact elfh directly.

Organisations wishing to use their own LMS

For HR departments wanting to know more about gaining access to courses using an existing Learning Management System please contact elfh directly to express interest.

More information

Please select the following link for more information on how to use the elfh Hub.