Continuing medical education
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Continuing medical education (CME) or continuing professional development (CPD) consists of educational activities which serve to maintain, develop, or increase the knowledge, skills, and professional performance and relationships that a medical practitioner uses to provide services for patients, the public, or the profession [1].The content of CME is that body of knowledge and skills generally recognized and accepted by the profession as within the basic medical sciences, the discipline of clinical medicine, and the provision of health care to the public.
Many regulatory bodies make a doctor's registration conditional on the acquisition of credits through following CME activities. Each state has various CME requirements for physicians who wish to maintain their licensure.
Growth in CME in recent years has come primarily from CME obtained throught online internet sites, with hundreds of websites [2] now offering a multitude of courses. According to the Accreditation Council on Continuing Medical Education [3] 72% of all physicians partcipated in some sort of online activity in 2004. The number of online participants grew 55% between 2003 and 2004. In 2005 statistics are due out in July of 2006, but continued growth is expected.
As technology advances, CME is adapting and several companies are offering educational programs in various portable formats including audio podcasts and interactive modules that run on mobile handhelds and smartphones.
