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Letters to the Editor Indian Pediatrics 2002; 39: 112-113 |
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Conducting Continuing Medical Education Program |
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We read with interest the recent communication(1). The Neonatal Division of the Department of Pediatrics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences has been conducting workshops on a regular basis over the last few years on a self-supporting basis. Based on the feedback, we were encouraged to organize a National CME in Neonatology for 3 days recently and this event was very well received. The salient lessons we have learnt over the years are enumerated below. Raising Funds We have always believed that we should not involve the industry for funding. We have also felt that these CMEs should be conducted on a no-profit-no-loss basis and that the delegates should pay for what they learn. With this philosophy, we have done away with all the frills and sideshows normally attached to workshops and CMEs. Our aim is to provide quality content to the participants. We decide, in advance, on the optimum number of parti-cipants that would make learning meaningful and do not allow spot registrations. To date, all our events have been overbooked. We believe that when people pay to attend the CME, they are keen learners. Notification We maintain a database of all those who attend our meetings. Apart from the announcements in the journals, advance personal intimation to those on our database ensures the ‘personal touch’ factor and draws participants who are interested and keen to benefit. Scientific Content Careful thought is given to the scientific content with the participants’ interests in mind. Our idea is not to impress those attending with some hi-fi mumbo-jumbo but to ensure that every speaker is able to address the topics in a manner with which the participants can not only identify but also translate it to practical benefit in their individual settings. This needs co-ordination between the faculty members (who are drawn from various places). We have been able to achieve this by back and forth sharing of material between the faculty through e-mail and other means well before the CME. Thus, the entire faculty delivers material as a combined and well co-ordinated body. We ensure a reasonable mix of lectures, case dis-cussions as well as demonstrations and panel discussions as appropriate. The appropriate-ness of the contents of each session is ensured by the faculty keeping in mind the target audience and the conditions and constraints under which our participants deliver medical care. The aim is to offer certain simple, practical and appropriate take home messages that would improve patient care. Timing and Interactions We have been able to follow time schedule since there are no frills attached. Each lecture or discussion is allotted a separate time period for questions from the participants and this has been very well received. In fact, the success of the policy of adhering to time can be gauged from the fact that our recent CME could start sharp at the scheduled time, every day with majority of the participants reaching well in time. The keenness to learn can be assessed from the fact that the participants themselves decided in favor of shorter lunch and tea breaks so that they got more time to interact with the faculty. Even those who had gone out to relieve themselves were seen hurrying back in record time!! During the breaks, participants are provided the opportunity to mingle with the faculty and have informal one-to-one interactions with the faculty; this has been lauded by the participants. Another aspect of interaction was the opportunity given to registrants of the CME to send their doubts and questions (based on the topics as given in the program) well in advance, by e-mail or post to the organizers. This enabled the faculty to get an idea of the participants’ needs and prepare accordingly. Material for the Participants For our workshops, we provide partici-pants with printed material well in advance so that they can go through the material and come prepared with their doubts and questions. Even for the CME, detailed printed handouts on the topics being covered was given so that the participants did not have to note down anything during the sessions. This again was possible because of the co-ordination amongst the faculty, well in advance of the CME. Conclusion We are confident that if the factors mentioned above are kept in mind by organiz-ing committees of CMEs, the problems of funding from external sources can be avoided. The delegates do not mind paying higher registration fees if they get value for their money.
Ashok K. Deorari, |
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