EFFECTIVINESS OF CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION

Introduction: Continuing medical education (CME) consists of educational activities which serve to maintain, develop or increase the knowledge, skills and professional performance and relationship that a physician uses to provide service for the patient, the public or the profession. As this is a new phenomenon in Pakistan, so we measured doctor’s perspective regarding CME.

Material and methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in DHQ hospital (District headquarters) affiliated with Gujranwala Medical College (GMC), Gujranwala. A pre-structured questionnaire was filled by doctors manually and doctors were selected by using consecutive non-probability sampling. The response was measured on likert scale. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 21.

Results: Out of hundred, 77 doctors attended CME program in last 3 months of which, 74% doctors were agreed that CME is a beneficial activity,72% doctors were agreed that it has positive effect on doctors performance,67% doctors were agreed that it has a positive effect on patients health outcome and 44% doctors were  agreed that CME programs should be mandatory.23 doctors did not attend any CME activity in last 3 months of which,1% doctors were  strongly disagreed that CME is a beneficial activity,3% doctors were disagreed that it  has a positive effect on doctors performance, 5% doctors were disagreed that it has a positive effect on patients health outcome and 9% doctors were disagreed that it should be mandatory.

Conclusion: The overall conclusion is that ; CME appears to be effective at acquisition and retention of knowledge, attitudes, skills, behaviors and clinical outcomes.

Key words: Continuing medical education, health outcome, performance, doctor patient relation.