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	WELCOME TO A WEB-BASED LEARNING PROGRAMME IN SLEEP MEDICINE! Sleep disorders are highly prevalent within the community but are often under-recognised and under-treated by the majority of health care providers despite the huge explosion in knowledge in this area over the last 20 years (1, 2, 3, 4). Most studies looking at the lack of medical education in the area of sleep are now dated and focus only on health professionals practising in the United States of America (1, 2). However, the data are astonishing. For instance, one study by Meissner et al (5) examined the prevalence of sleep complaints in hospitalised patients in a tertiary care medical centre to find that although nearly half (47%) of the patients reported either insomnia or excessive daytime somnolence on a sleep questionnaire no medical records included any patient symptoms related to sleep. Rosen et al (6) in a more recent study have shown a low rate of recognition of sleep disorders in a community-based health centre serving primarily minority or medically indigent persons. Why are sleep disorders so under-recognised? Despite increasing knowledge in this area, most physicians receive little or no education in sleep medicine – a recent report from the United Kingdom showed that medical students received less than 30 minutes total, on average, about sleep in their curricula (7). Sleep may often be perceived as less critical to health or performance when it comes to patient management. Health care workers may have negative constructs with respect to sleep. Sometimes, there may simply be an absence of an expert on faculty or lack of time in the overall medical school curriculum. And, during specialist training in respiratory medicine it is not always mandatory to have sleep medicine experience! In putting together this website on sleep disorders, we have established a specific European-based web-based educational resource. All the material has been written by internationally recognised experts in the field of sleep medicine, who have contributed substantially to our understanding in this area. In this way, we hope that we have also provided some country specific contacts, including information on sleep courses available. For the first 6 months of this website, we would appreciate your assistance with a before and after questionnaire to help us assess the impact of creating this educational resource. Your time and trouble in filling out the questions is much appreciated! We hope you find the resources useful and welcome any feedback. You can contact us directly through the website and we shall do our best to get back to you in a timely manner. Enjoy! Renata L Riha, Heather M Engleman and The team at the ERS educational resource centre REFERENCES 1. Orr WC, Stahl, Dement WC et al. Physician education in sleep disorders. J Med Educ 1980; 55: 367 – 369. 2. Rosen RC, Roselind M, Rosevear C, Cole WE, Dement WC. Physician education in sleep and sleep disorders: a national survey of U.S. medical schools. Sleep 1993; 16:249 – 254. 3. Rosen R, Mahowald M, Chesson A et al. The Taskforce 2000 survey on medical education in sleep and sleep disorders. Sleep 1998; 21: 235 – 238. 4. Rosen R, Zozula R. Education and training in the field of sleep medicine. Curr Opin Pulm Med 2000; 6: 512 - 518. 5. Meissner HH, Riemer A, Santiago SM et al. Failure of physician documentation of sleep complaints in hospitalized patients. West J Med 1998; 169: 146 – 149. 6. Rosen RC, Zozula R, Jahn EG et al. Low rates of recognition of sleep disorders in primary care: comparison of a community-based versus clinical academic setting. Sleep Med 2001 2:47-55. 7. Stores G, Crawford C. Medical student education in sleep and its disorders. J R Coll Phys Lond 1998; 32: 149 – 153.