Revitalizing continuing medical education

You've probably already seen the cream-coloured flyers with their bright blue logo advertising courses and clinical days. Behind the new image is a new philosophy -- or rather, a return to the tradition of an office dedicated to CME.

L-R: Fran Kirby, Vernon Curran and Dr. Lydia Hatcher are working on a project  to develop CME modules for faculty  presentations.

Dr. Lydia Hatcher was recently named director of CME under the umbrella of the Professional Development Office. A new regional advisory committee of 25 people has been formed for CME with representatives from all the health care boards in the province.

"This new working group will help with planning, co-ordinating, implementing and identifying areas of CME that will be beneficial to physicians," said Dr. Hatcher.

The restructured CME office has a number of new initiatives, including outreach programs that include the weekly Wednesday at Noon -- Ask the consultant, offered via the Teleconference network. "This gives physicians a great opportunity to discuss cases with the guest consultant and colleagues," said Dr. Hatcher.

Other educational programs will go on the road and be conducted in various regions of the province. This includes Train the Trainer programs, Whiplash and Back Injury, Violence against Women and the CME Ski Weekend in Corner Brook March 19-21.

As co-ordinator of all administrative and educational services for Professional Development, Fran Kirby works closely with the office team of Marjorie Mercer, Bonnie Scott and Wendy McEvoy. "Working with many physicians and industry representatives, our office develops and coordinates -- along with the planning committee -- more than 40 courses and one or two national meetings each year."

Ms. Kirby is proud of the job done by Professional Development. "It can be hectic sometimes but although it's a new area for me it brings many daily challenges which makes it rewarding and satisfying."

A new member of Professional Development is Vernon Curran, an educational consultant who also works with the Telemedicine Centre. He has a variety of responsibilities with CME, including conducting needs assessments and developing instructional support materials for CME instructors and participants.

"Recently, we completed an evaluation research study of the effectiveness of a hybrid computer-mediated instructional delivery system for providing continuing medical education at a distance to rural and remote physicians," said Mr. Curran. "In this study we looked at the effectiveness of the World Wide Web, multimedia and computer conferencing technologies for producing collaborative and interactive instructional experiences for physicians."

Mr. Curran said the results of the evaluation suggest that computer-mediated CME is cost-efficient and educationally effective for delivering self-paced and collaborative CME instruction to rural and remote physicians. "Rural and remote physicians were very impressed with the technology and its potential for enabling them to complete self-paced online CME without having to travel to a larger centre."

Physicians completing the course reported significant changes in their clinical knowledge and skills as a result of participating in the online course. "Hopefully, these self-reported changes will transfer to the quality of care they provide to their patients and their patients' health outcomes," said Mr. Curran.

The next step is to enhance the instructional courseware piloted by CME, including developing more content and redesigning some of the Web pages. "We will be developing a second online module in clinical dermatology, and these two modules will be available for physicians to register in early in the new year," he said. "The evaluation was an important part of the planning and development process and the findings have provided us with some important feedback regarding how to delivery CME online."

Faculty development is also part of the work at the Office of Professional Development. A TIPS workshop on clinical teaching provides two days of intensive education for physicians who supervise and teach medical students. Faculty development is also incorporated into course committee activities: a faculty developer works with all course committees to help them interpret and use student evaluation of courses. The developer also helps faculty members enhance their ability to write objectives, create exams, and select appropriate teaching and learning methods.