Continuing medical education for life: Eight principles

Continuing medical education (CME) is being pressured to change in response to increasing and changing educational needs of practicing physicians, fos tered by technical innovations, evolution of practice styles, and the reorg anization of health care delivery. Leadership in the reform of CME falls pr imarily to the medical specialty societies in light of their traditional re sponsibilities for accrediting CME and maintaining professional standards. To address the need for reform, the American College of Obstetricians and G ynecologists in 1997 organized a conference to assemble CME program adminis trators from several medical specialties and academicians with expertise in postgraduate learning. At the conference, issues facing CME were examined. The authors, who were conference participants, state and explain eight prin ciples that emerged from conference discussions. (For example; "Educational activities should be supportive of and coordinated with the transition to evidence-based medicine.") The principles reflect the interspecialty and in terdisciplinary consensus achieved by the conference participants and can s erve as useful guideposts for educators as they work to improve CME in thei r institutions. The authors conclude by noting the need for a more systematic and rigorousl y analytic approach, where CME content is determined according to assessed needs and CME is evaluated by measuring outcomes; for this to happen, CME e ducators and faculty must be brought up to date through training, including the use of problem-based learning. CME must also instill collegiality, int eraction, and collaboration into the learning environment instead of being a solitary learning activity. Finally, CME must not only emphasize the acqu isition of knowledge but also instruct physicians in the process of decisio n making to help them better use their knowledge as they make clinical judg ments.