β Scribed by William Campbell Felch
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
No slight is intended in saying that the Third Congress on CME had some resemblance to a three-ring circus. The planners intentionally arranged for a packed program, and, from time to time, we attendees were required to pick between two tracks or settle for one of several concurrent symposia.
Certainly, the planners did not start out with timorous objectives. The first of the stated ones was pretty all-encompassing: to get the participants to "develop a research, education, and service agenda for the continuing medical education profession for the next five years, and thus a f f i the status of CME as a discipline."
Meeting this objective required peering into the future, a thread that ran through the entire tapestry of the program. It began vividly with Roy Schwarz' keynote talk on the future of CME, continued with Robert Simerly's vision (piped in by satellite) of CME professionals as futurists, included Dale Dauphinee's thoughtful discourse about a profession's responsibilities in developing public policy, and ended with Terry Deal's talk about the changing world of CME, which included a warning that people who feel threatened by change often work to keep it from happening easily.
In between, there were gems such as Tom Piemme's talk on the proliferation of medical knowledge (thank heaven for computers) and John Parboosingh's description of the problems/opportunities connected with assessing long-term clinical outcomes. A major program segment was devoted to the matter of public policy responsibilities: Dick Wilbur recounted the history of the public policy/CME connection; George McGee presented a wideranging discussion of its alternative futures; and Stephen Jay identified the several CME roles in determining public policy.
In consonance with the two previous CME congresses, this one placed suitable emphasis (it was Objective #3) on the growing volume of rigorously designed scientific studies being carried out in the CHE arena. Once again, these presentations were under the banner of that marvelously unstructured group that is committed to research in CME-RICME. Ron Cervero introduced the topic skillfully; Don Moore described the scope of the CME enterprise; and the inimitable Alan Knox led a consensus-developing panel. In due course, many of the papers presented under the RICME aegis will appear in these pages.
Major program segments were devoted to Objective #2--dispensing "knowledge concerning major issues affecting continuing medical education.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
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