Review Article Reforming and Repositioning Continuing Medical Education

Purpose: Discuss problems with Continuing Medical Education (CME) and suggest reforms. Methods: Assimilation of literature, personal communications, and experience. Discussions with organizations and individuals, literature review, and extant perceptions in the CME community. Results: Recommendations for improvement of the CME process. Conclusions: Multiple stakeholders in CME must work together in implementation of change. That Continu-ing Medical Education (CME) needs reform is not news to those who read the educational literature. Classic CME (lectures in large dark halls) fails to produce change in physician behavior. However, most physicians are comfortable with present approaches. During a five-year dialogue and planning effort, 14 major stakeholders of CME in the US came together to form a Conjoint Committee (led by the author) and agreed both on the need for change and the initial plan to achieve it. Fundamental system wide changes must occur in CME affecting educational methodology and physician capability, particularly in self-assessment, as well as in: accreditation; certification; credentialing; licensure; and credit reporting, recording and funding. The multiple involved parties who “control ” various aspects of CME agreed to focus on the physician end-user and create a revised CME system. This “new CME ” would include simplified, standard reporting of CME experiences for physicians, a