Maintenance of professional competence remains an exercise of lifelong learning and an essential requirement for evidence -based medical practice. Physicians attend continuing medical education (CME) programs to update their knowledge. Often CME programs remain the main source of updating current information. CME organizers have considerable responsibility in determining appropriate curriculum ...

important deficiency in current medical practice. The incidents narrated by Aggarwal et al appear to follow poor inter-personal relationships between the various clinicians, the need for one or more of them to dominate over others, and sheer cussedness. They may also be the consequence of overwork with little opportunity to relax and shed exhaustion. Whatever the reasons, the patient suffers as...

Drawing from experience in Switzerland, a test of 60 multiple choice questions covering the entire area of rheumatology was constructed and used at the international symposium of rheumatology, EULAR, Geneva 1998. It was introduced as a multiple choice question game, the language was English, and the level of acceptance was very high. Language posed only occasional problems. The reliability of t...

To ensure that continuing medical education (CME) continues to evolve so that it offers educational activities that are relevant to physicians in keeping with the definition of CME, CME providers must respond to and prepare for emerging expectations. This article puts into context the impact of the current emphasis on lifelong learning in medicine, particularly the requirement for maintenance o...

The United States-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI) include the U.S. Flag Territories of American Samoa and Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and three Freely Associated States: the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the Republic of Palau. These six jurisdictions span four time zones and are separated by over 4,000 m...

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study was to examine strategies for recruiting physician subjects in a practice-based research network continuing education research study, using different recruitment methods at four systems, or health plan arrangements. METHODS The North Texas Primary Care Practice-based Research Network Needs Assessment Study consisted of a survey and five self-directed med...

Although the concept of needs assessment in continuing medical education is well accepted, there is limited information on needs assessment in postgraduate medical education. We discuss the learning needs of postgraduate trainees and review the various methods of needs assessment such as: questionnaire surveys, interviews, focus groups, chart audits, chart-stimulated recall, standardized patien...