Toward continuous medical education

Abstract

While traditional continuing medical education (CME) courses increase participants' knowledge, they have minimal impact on the more relevant end points of physician behavior and patient outcomes. The interactive potential of online CME and its flexibility in time and place offer potential improvements over traditional CME. However, more emphasis should be placed on continuing education that occurs when clinicians search for answers to questions that arise in clinical practice, instead of that which occurs at an arbitrary time designated for CME. The use of learning portfolios and informationists can be integrated with self-directed CME to help foster a culture of lifelong learning.