Journal of CME最新文献

Integrating patient perspectives in medical education is increasingly recognised as critical for patient-centred care. However, many continuing professional development (CPD) programmes - particularly in surgical education - lack a structured approach to involve the patient perspective. This study explored faculty awareness, exposure, engagement and perceived barriers to integrating patient perspectives in surgeon education. We conducted an initial interview with a surgeon educator and a patient advocate to promote awareness and inform the design of an online questionnaire to be distributed to surgeon faculty. The questionnaire assessed familiarity with patient inclusion in education, frequency of involvement in educational activities, collaboration with patient organisations and perceived importance and barriers. We received 68 responses from surgeon faculty across 32 countries. While 77.7% were familiar with the concept of patient inclusion, only 54.4% had attended education that included patient perspectives in the past 5 years and 44.1% had involved patients in designing or delivering education. The most cited barriers for patient inclusion were lack of awareness (64.7%), institutional culture (45.6%), time constraints (42.7%), and concerns about liability or ethics (36.8%). Despite perception of low current levels of integration by 85.3% of respondents, the overall importance of incorporating the patient perspective in surgical education was rated high (average 3.57/5). Suggestions for improvement included partnerships with advocacy groups, use of patient stories, and involving patients in curriculum development. We can conclude that faculty recognise the value of integrating patient perspectives in surgical education, but practical implementation in CPD remains limited. Addressing cultural, ethical and institutional barriers and promoting collaboration with patient organisations may support more meaningful and sustained integration of patient perspectives in surgical education.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has profound implications for continuing professional development (CPD) in healthcare. Recognising the need for guidance in this evolving landscape, the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (the Alliance), a global association of CPD professionals and stakeholders who share and implement best practices across healthcare settings and professions, has developed a position statement on the ethical use of AI in CPD. This article outlines the process of creating this statement, its key principles, and the rationale behind its development. The statement, developed through a collaborative effort involving an AI task force and the Alliance board of directors, provides a framework for CPD professionals to navigate the integration of AI technologies responsibly. The position statement emphasises appropriate utilisation, privacy protection, transparence, compliance, human oversight, bias elimination, accessibility enhancement, and ongoing education about AI. As the field continues to evolve, this position statement serves as a crucial starting point for ensuring that AI's potential in healthcare education is harnessed ethically and effectively. Use of Artificial Intelligence: Generative artificial intelligence was used in the development of this article. Claude and ChatGPT were used for general editing of the initial article draft. Napkin.ai was used to create images.

Background: : Quality continuing education (CE) interventions should be effective, fit-for-purpose, and flexible for healthcare professionals. However, variability in the quality of reported interventions limits their impact. Education providers must ensure well-designed learning experiences to maximise efficiency and relevance. This study details the systematic design of a genomic testing learning intervention, incorporating practical exercises and aligning with educational principles to evaluate its impact on knowledge acquisition, self-efficacy, and skills performance.

Methods: : The intervention, conducted in a skills laboratory in Bern, Switzerland, included an interactive online learning module based on learning science principles. Participants engaged in simulated patient (SP) encounters to apply their skills, followed by an informal debriefing session with SPs and content experts. A pre-test post-test study design measured applied knowledge (patient scenario test), self-efficacy (confidence ratings), and skills performance (SP assessments). Wilcoxon tests assessed improvements, Mann-Whitney U tests identified group differences, and Pearson's r calculated effect sizes.

Results: : Sixteen participants enrolled, including general practitioners (n = 8) and 4th year medical students (n = 8). In total, the balance of female/male participants was 9(=female)/7(=male), with an overall age of M = 35.9. After the intervention, participants had significantly higher applied knowledge scores (W = 98, |z| = 2.89, p = .004; r = .72), self-reported significantly higher confidence in genomic testing skills (W = 134, |z| = 3.41, p < .001; r = 0.85) and had significantly higher skills performance scores (W = 107, |z| = 2.02, p = .044; r = .50).

Conclusion: : A well-designed learning intervention in genomic testing significantly improved applied knowledge, self-efficacy and skills performance in primary care. These findings underscore the importance of structured CE programmes, highlighting instructional design as a key factor in optimising learning outcomes.

Cognitive research consistently demonstrates that spaced repetition enhances memory consolidation and retrieval by reinforcing learned material over time. This study applies the Precede-Proceed Model of Learning framework to examine how predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing educational strategies support sustained knowledge retention among healthcare professionals. The analysis focused on three accredited continuing professional development (CPD) programs conducted between 2022 and 2024. Participants engaged in educational activities that included baseline pre-test and post-activity post-test assessments, with exposure categorized based on prior interaction with related content. Learners were stratified into groups by timing and frequency of exposure to the material. The primary outcome measured was improvement in test performance across sequential learning engagements. Results indicated that learners who accessed educational content prior to the activity demonstrated a significantly higher mean pre-test score of 31% (n = 443) compared to 27% (n = 1,416) among those who viewed it afterward (p = 0.041). Furthermore, repeat learners, regardless of content timing, achieved greater knowledge gains, improving by 34% (p < 0.001), in contrast to a 26% improvement among first-time learners (p < 0.001). These findings highlight the additive value of progressive and repeated exposure in CPD programs. By analysing longitudinal engagement patterns, this study reinforces the importance of strategically structured educational design to foster enduring clinical competence.

Higher education institutions around the world have a responsibility to diversify their course content. This is an important consideration to ensure that students are prepared to serve a diverse population once they graduate, however, a lack of diversity representation in medical school curricula in particular, is reported in the literature. A paucity of reliable resources to support creating more inclusive content is also reported. This study developed and validated a diversity measurement instrument, designed to look at representation in the areas of gender, religion, age, disability, ethnicity/race, sexuality, and socio-economic status. Early prototypes were sent to experts for validity testing and using their feedback, improvements and iterations were made to the instrument until the final instrument was agreed: the GRADES10©. The instrument was then applied to a variety of medical education resources to test for rater-reliability. An accompanying user guide was developed to support users with the application of the GRADES10© in practice. Face validity was conducted by 10 experts on several iterations of the instrument from the early prototype (GRADESs7), until the final agreed GRADES10©. Rater-reliability was calculated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Cronbach's Alpha measure of internal consistency. The GRADES10© instrument was shown to have an ICC of 0.83% (SD 0.725-0.907) p= < .0001, and Cronbach's Alpha of 0.97. Overall, this study has shown that the validated GRADES10© instrument is able to measure diversity in medical teaching resources reliably. The GRADES10© has the potential to contribute to creating a more inclusive learning environment by allowing its users to apply a diversity metric to their educational materials, to identify gaps and areas for improvement. If applied by medical schools and organisations offering continuing medical education courses in future, the GRADES10© may impact the grassroots of medical education diversification, which may have a beneficial effect on medical student and doctors' attitudes, experiences and ultimately on patient care.

Clinical simulation is key in medical education, but its traditional implementation is costly and complex. This study explored the use of ChatGPT (generative AI) to create interactive clinical scenarios and evaluated students' perceptions of this innovative tool. An exploratory, cross-sectional study was conducted with 32 fourth- and fifth-year medical students. A case of acute coronary syndrome was designed, where ChatGPT (GPT-4) acted as a virtual patient, dynamically responding to students' questions and decisions. After the simulation, participants completed a survey with 20 Likert-scale items and open-ended questions. The results showed high satisfaction: more than 90% considered the case clear and realistic, 94% positively evaluated the virtual patient's responses, and 88% perceived the difficulty as appropriate. Additionally, 97% found automated feedback useful. Qualitative comments highlighted the immersion and safety of the experience, allowing students to practice without fear of making mistakes. Some suggestions included adding greater clinical depth and adjusting the case difficulty. ChatGPT is a promising tool for clinical simulation, offering realistic and challenging scenarios that students perceive as beneficial for developing clinical reasoning and decision-making skills in a safe environment. Automated feedback was highly valued. However, this study is exploratory, and further research with larger samples is needed to validate its educational impact and address challenges such as content supervision and the ethical integration of AI in medical education.

Real-world evaluation data strongly suggest that substantial multi-level heterogeneity of continuing education (CE) audiences, though considered highly desirable, poses severe challenges to the assessment of what a single CE activity might have contributed to either improve or maintain achievements or prevent change for the worse. This relates in particular to change in higher levels of outcomes, such as performance, patient health, and/or community health. This sets narrow limits to the design of an objective, reliable and reasonably valid assessment of change in evaluating the effectiveness of a single CE activity. Although CE may be more effective in leading to consistent behaviour in homogeneous groups with regard to background and motivation, trying to reduce the various levels of heterogeneity would be an unrealistic, and also unwanted, approach. Thus, we still have to trust physicians (and other healthcare professionals) to exercise their professionalism in pursuit of individual opinion forming trajectories in the best interests of their patients. However, providers may also choose some more targeted approaches to influence the mindset even in heterogeneous learner groups: - integrating not only knowledge and competence but also current performance gaps into pre-/post-tests - increasing opportunities for discussion will allow optimal matching of the individual needs of participants with the CE content. When reported, unprecedented numbers of participants' questions (>50 per webinar) have been processed during and/or after an e-learning activity, and even higher numbers of interactions might be expected in demand use of e-learning material. Thus, e-learning in combination with long-term faculty engagement has promising potential for sustainable competence.

The 17th Annual European CME Forum (17ECF) took place 6-8 November 2024 in Madrid, Spain. The meeting was subdivided into three main parts to address the theme "Tomorrow's world today": 1) GenAI and digital innovations; 2) Thriving today - anticipating tomorrow; 3) Tomorrow's world today. As is customary, the Forum unofficially began with the pre-meeting sessions before being formally opened. This year's pre-meeting sessions included a new "Core competencies in CME/CPD" track to address fundamental topics for the continuing medical education (CME) / continuing professional development (CPD) professional, as well as sessions led by key stakeholder groups in Europe. Throughout the two-day meeting, participants engaged in a series of interactive plenary sessions, workshops, breakouts and oral poster presentations led by European and international providers, accreditors, medical societies, grantors and learners. The Journal of CME also attended to discuss the 2024 Special Collection of articles, which covered the theme "AI innovations in lifelong learning: Revolutionising CME and CPD". About 100 stakeholders participated in the annual meeting, with one-third attending for the first time. In keeping with the mission of European CME Forum, 17ECF aimed to facilitate education, interaction and engagement among all stakeholder groups with an interest in European and global CME and CPD, promoting multi-channel discussion in an independent and neutral environment. This meeting report summarises the meeting content and key takeaways from 17ECF.

Several simulation models are available for cataract surgery training, but they have limitations in terms of quality and availability. The Farra Eye Model, a new cataract surgery simulator, was developed using 3D-printing technology to provide residents with more options. This study aims to determine its face and content validity as a surgical simulator for training capsulorhexis, a crucial step in cataract surgery. Ophthalmology residents and consultants at the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Indonesia, were asked to complete three capsulorhexis tasks in the eye model. Then, subjects were surveyed using a validated questionnaire to assess the face and content validity of the model. Responses were recorded using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from (1) disagree to (5) strongly agree. Twenty-two subjects completed the tasks. The overall face validity score was favourable (3.67 ± 0.67). However, the resident group considered capsule elasticity poor (2.73 ± 1.1), while the consultant group still felt it realistic (3.64 ± 0.9). The content validity had a favourable score in the overall assessment (4.15 ± 0.58) and for each assessment component. Despite the challenge of replicating human lens capsule elasticity, the Farra Eye Model demonstrates initial evidence supporting its use for capsulorhexis training. It can be helpful for training programs with limited access to commercially available simulation models.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1080/28338073.2024.2437294.].