An Internet site sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in cooperation with the University of Alabama Birmingham Center for Disaster Preparedness is expanding its reach to primary care physicians, offering them information on diagnosis and treatment of rare infections and on exposures to bioterrorist agents such as smallpox and anthrax.
The site currently offers continuing education credits to hospital-based clinicians. It is being expanded to increase access for 265 000 office-based family physicians, internists, pediatricians, and dermatologists.
The site includes five online courses for hospital emergency department physicians and nurses, radiologists, pathologists, and infection control workers. Courses cover identification of potential bioterrorist agents and commonly associated syndromes.
The courses are free and each offers 1 hour of continuing education credit. The site is at http://www.bioterrorism.uab.edu.
