Open Journal of Gastroenterology, 2021, 11, 151-160 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ojgas ISSN Online: 2163-9469 ISSN Print: 2163-9450 DOI: 10.4236/ojgas.2021.119016 Sep. 2, 2021 151 Open Journal of Gastroenterology The Impact of a Real-Life Inflammatory Bowel Disease Education Course for Brazilian Physicians from the Perspective of Its Participants Rodrigo Fedatto Beraldo 1 , Julio Pinheiro Baima 1 , Jaqueline Ribeiro de Barros 1 , Fernanda Lofiego Renosto 1 , Rogerio Saad-Hossne 2 , Ligia Yukie Sassaki 1 1 Department of Internal Medicine, Medical School, São Paulo State University (Unesp), Botucatu, Brazil 2 Department of Surgery, Medical School, São Paulo State University (Unesp), Botucatu, Brazil Abstract Background: Physicians must acquire the necessary skills to provide In- flammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients with state-of-the-art clinical care, aiming to improve patient’s quality of life and disease outcomes. Purpose: To describe the queries and experiences of doctors enrolled in an IBD education course and to evaluate the impact of the course. Methods: A retrospective study included 100 physicians, of which 78 attended the course. A question- naire was applied evaluating how the course had an impact on their IBD-knowledge. The 20-hour-course consisted of practical “real-life” activi- ties and theoretical discussions. Results: The majority of doctors’ expertise was in gastroenterology (53%) and coloproctology (44%). A significant por- tion had no experience with biological therapy for ulcerative colitis (19.4%) or Crohn’s disease (5.05%). The main topics doctors wanted to discuss were biological therapy (93%), new drugs (74%) and differential diagnosis (64%). A considerable number of physicians did not feel confident at prescribing bi- ological therapy before the course (44.4%), a percentage that decreased to 8.5% after the course (p < 0.0001). The impact of the course was considered high (grades 9 and 10) by most of the participants (78.2%). Discussion: The ideal course should have a practical and theoretical component, as well as the support of an experienced multidisciplinary team. A real-life practical-theoretical IBD course proved a success at increasing IBD knowledge. Keywords Continuing Medical Education, Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Inflammatory Bowel Disease How to cite this paper: Beraldo, R.F., Baima, J.P., Barros, J.R., Renosto, F.L., Saad-Hossne, R. and Sassaki, L.Y. (2021) The Impact of a Real-Life Inflammatory Bowel Disease Education Course for Bra- zilian Physicians from the Perspective of Its Participants. Open Journal of Gastroenter- ology, 11, 151-160. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojgas.2021.119016 Received: July 12, 2021 Accepted: August 29, 2021 Published: September 2, 2021 Copyright © 2021 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access