AAFP offers double-credit CME to push evidence-based learning

The move comes as evidence-based medicine continues to gain in popularity.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Nov. 14, 2005.

Take one continuing medical education course and get twice the credit. That's the American Academy of Family Physicians' latest pitch promoting its brand of evidence-based CME.

While proponents of the AAFP campaign are confident that evidence-based CME is the wave of the future, skeptics say flaws in the system could slow acceptance. But regardless of whether a course sports the AAFP's evidence-based CME designation, even critics say the move toward evidence-based medicine and higher-quality CME content is gaining momentum.

"It's hard to overstate," said family physician Lee Green, MD, MPH, an associate professor at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor who has taught double-credit CME classes. "If the AAFP stays the course and keeps it going, not too terribly far down the road when the generation of physicians trained in evidence-based medicine is practicing, it will make non-evidence-based CME look second class."

The AAFP set specific standards for evidence-based CME in 2002. Now it's upping the ante with the double-credit offer.

"We feel [evidence-based CME] does raise the bar on content, so it should have added credit, too," said Nancy Davis, PhD, director of the AAFP's Division of Continuing Medical Education. "We're trying to give value. It's been kind of a controversial thing to do. How do you know [evidence-based] CME is any more effective than traditional CME? We don't know yet."

Another question is whether physicians will do less CME if they're getting double credit. "I hope that that's just being cynical and that physicians will be doing CME to learn, not just to meet CME requirements," Dr. Davis said.