Continuous Medical Education

VGRD and this VGRD Blog have been around for a number of years now. Both serve as forums at which dermatologists and other physicians can post and comment on interesting and challenging cases. Other sites such as the Skin Cancer Clinic blog out of Queensland, Australia serve a similar function and are better attended. We came across an article recently which lends credence to this activity and indicates that this interactive format may be a better way of providing continuing professional education than the lectures which we traditionally attend at conferences and hospital rounds.

The article appeared in The Journal of General Internal Medicine in 2004. Here are the particulars:

Toward Continuous Medical Education
Roni F Zeiger, MD
Gen Intern Med. 2005 January; 20(1): 91–94.
For full article click on PDF locate .pdf download access it.

While traditional continuing medical education (CME) courses increase participants' knowledge, they have minimal impact on the more relevant end points of physician behavior and patient outcomes. The interactive potential of online CME and its flexibility in time and place offer potential improvements over traditional CME. However, more emphasis should be placed on continuing education that occurs when clinicians search for answers to questions that arise in clinical practice, instead of that which occurs at an arbitrary time designated for CME. The use of learning portfolios and informationists can be integrated with self-directed CME to help foster a culture of lifelong learning.