Continuing dental education. Reasonable answers to unreasonable questions

✍ Scribed by David W. Chambers; Douglas L. Hamilton

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 532 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-1912
• DOI: 10.1002/chp.4760010204

✦ Synopsis

Increasing goiiernment iniioluement in health care, interest in consumerism, and improiled instructional technology h a w raised new challenges f o r continuing dental education. Arguments from educational research and eiialuation theory are used to show the potential dangers involued in compulsory, massmedia continuing education with pre-and posttest measures of success.

e w pressures are mounting in the field of N continuing dental education. Compulsory attendance as a condition for relicensure in some states is just one symptom of the new challenges arising from recent interest in consumerism, increased government involvement in health care delivery, and technical advances in the education industry. Three basic questions have caught the attention of continuing education evaluators in the past few years. How can continuing education better protect the public? How can continuing education be brought within the reach of more practitioners? How can changed behavior resulting from participation in continuing education be measured?

For each question, a reasonable answer probably can be reached with sufficient time and the well-funded cooperation of dental educators and educational specialists. Vigorous work is underway in several places in the country in an effort to meet these challenges.

Regardless of good intentions and hard work, it is unwise to accept unreasonable challenges. Valuable resources and energy may be misspent in the pursuit of the wrong goals. This paper questions the meaningfulness of the three questions raised.