The following is a report of a four-week continuing education seminar in the history of medical ethics that was conducted for health care practitioners at Galveston in 1978. Its scope and contents were quite different from that of traditional CME programs. Some background information will set the stage for a closer look at this humanities seminar. atterns of systematic instruction labeled P "continuing medical education" appeared concurrently with the development of clinical specialty training programs during the 1930s and 1940s. Lectures and case presentations in amphitheater clinics were the typical formats. Physicians attended these sessions to overcome deficiencies from earlier training and to learn "new" information that would keep them "up-to-date" (1). J
In 1939, the American Medical Association listed 109 formally designed continuing education "courses"; in the first six months of 1946, more than 500 courses were offered. As medical specialty boards, state medical associations, and state medical licensing boards began requiring continuing education as conditions for membership and recertification, the number of courses skyrocketed, from 1,105 in 1961-62 to 7,330 in 1977-78. Most medical school? responded to this demand by appointing administrators and staff associates to manage an extensive variety of these Reprinted from Mobius, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1982 with permission of The Regents of the University of California.