CME turns to emphasis on evidence

New trend in continuing medical education takes hold at family physicians' annual meeting.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Nov. 11, 2002.

San Diego -- Medical practice backed by solid science sounds like common sense, but the introduction of evidenced-based continuing medical education has found skeptics among CME providers, who will have to revise their courses and alter faculty guidelines if they want to meet the American Academy of Family Physicians' new standards.

The AAFP has approved 142.4 credit hours as evidence-based CME since it rolled out this new designation in January, and it offered 30 evidence-based CME classes at its annual meeting in October. Relative to the 100,000 credit hours of AAFP-approved CME, this is a tiny amount, but AAFP leaders think this will change as more doctors hear of evidence-based CME.

At the AAFP annual meeting, many physicians weren't aware of the difference between evidence-based and conventional CME content as they selected courses. But this isn't surprising, given the newness of the designation. Physicians chose their lecture by topic, not by whether it contained evidence-based material. The AAFP expects that once physicians have seen several evidence-based presentations, they'll start to keep an eye out for them.

For now, evidence-based CME is optional, but if it proves to have a positive impact on getting physicians to carry their new knowledge back to the office, and if patient outcomes improve, there could well be a move to make it mandatory.

Nancy Davis, PhD, director of the division of CME for the AAFP, said momentum is building to make evidence-based CME the norm, because doctors want top-quality information. [...]