Continuing Medical Education(CME) is a useful tool to enhance patient care and improve the quality of the health care delivery system.

The need of the hour

CMEs aim to provide continuous improvement in learning and help healthcare professionals identify potential gaps in their professional practice. Traditionally, the focus of CME has been to keep the physicians and healthcare professionals updated on the recent developments in their area of practice. However, with the progress in health care and increased incidences of a variety of diseases, the healthcare delivery system has become extremely complex. Overload of cases, increased expectations of patients, restrictions imposed by insurance companies, and the need to make the best use of the limited time that can be spent per patient- proves that the focus of CMEs should be on improving the efficiency of the care delivery system.

Strategies to improve CME practices

• Having interprofessional education as a core element in CME: Traditionally CMEs have had a specialty-specific approach. But, what seems critical in this day and age is the focus on bringing health professionals from various disciplines together in customized learning environments. This would foster improvement in the way health professionals work as a team and provide the best possible care to the patients.
• Bringing about a broader learning perspective: Moore et al. found that CMEs primarily focus on finding solutions to patient care problems. However, managing healthcare isn’t just about treating the patient’s health condition. The skill set required for a successful healthcare professional also includes- communication, working in teams, use of information technology, ethical practices, professionalism, and quality improvement. These areas must also be addressed in CMEs to provide a broader perspective in learning.
• Focusing more on population and public health issues: The changing dynamics of healthcare should now focus on preventive health strategies and improve the overall health of the population. Public health issues that affect the various sections of the population must be identified and addressed in the CMEs.
• Encouraging interactive CME sessions: Interactive CME sessions allow active participation of the attendees. Such sessions provide the opportunity to practice skills and can bring about a change in professional practice and health care outcomes.
• Adopting new approaches to CME delivery: Traditional CMEs are usually confined to lectures delivered to a large and diverse audience by reputed professionals who fly in from faraway lands. However, a study published by Davis Dave et al. tells us that didactic sessions are not very effective in changing a physician’s performance.

New and improved models of CME should be adopted to meet the different needs and learning styles of the healthcare professionals today.

Few examples of innovative CME approaches are just-in-time learning in the work setting or online such as Internet Point of Care CME activities, Committee Learning CME Activities, problem-based, team and systems learning and change (eg, Performance Improvement CME Activities); and multi-interventional, experiential, and/or self-assessed curricula around particularly complex areas of practice.

CMEs not only helps health care providers be at par with the recent advances in their field of specialization but also help them work as a team to provide the highest quality of patient-centred care.

They are, however, limited in developing countries due to the lack of legal or other incentives. However, CMEs should be a part of medical practice as they have the capability to improve healthcare practices and patient outcomes, and positively affect community health.