Continuing professional development systems for medical physicists: A global survey and analysis

Continuing professional development (CPD) and continuing professional education (CPE) are seen as being necessary for medical physicists to ensure that they are up-to-date with current clinical practice. CPD is more than just continuing professional education, but can include research publication, working group contribution, thesis examination and many other activities. A systematic way of assessing and recording such activities that a medical physicist undertakes is used in a number of countries. This can be used for certification and licensing renewal purposes. Such systems are used in 27 countries, but they should be implemented in all countries where clinical medical physicists are employed.A survey of the CPD systems that are currently operated around the world is presented. In general they are quite similar although there are a few countries that have CPD systems that differ significantly from the others in many respects. Generally they ensure that medical physicists are kept up-to-date, although there are some that clearly will fail to achieve that.An analysis of what is required to construct a useful medical physics CPD system is made. Finally, the need for medical physicist professional organizations to cooperate and share in the production and distribution of CPD and CPE materials is emphasized.     

The Medical Library Service of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia

A unique provincial medical library service has been established in British Columbia. Under the direction of professional librarians, the central library in Vancouver is building an extensive, largely clinical collection while 30 smaller branch libraries in hospitals throughout the province are establishing basic, up-to-date collections. Financial support comes from an annual fee of $25.00 per doctor paid to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. Photoduplication, mail and telephone services meet many reference needs. Reading is vital to continuing medical education. The library works closely with the University of British Columbia''s Department of Continuing Medical Education to bring current medical knowledge to every doctor in British Columbia.     

Sex Education in the Schools— The Doctor's Role

Physicians may be asked to act as consultants in the development of sex education programs in the schools or to contribute as professional experts. As most medical libraries contain very little material on this subject, the doctor must turn to public libraries, which have books ranging from useless to excellent. These must be examined critically. In his role of healer, the doctor may minimize his roles of teacher and community model, and thereby lose many opportunities to communicate with members of other professions and thus extend health education beyond the limits of his practice.     

The Need for Continuing Medical Education

Continuing medical education is an essential feature of the practice of modern medicine since it furnishes the means to maintain the doctor''s ability to provide quality patient care.To ensure that continuing medical education is provided efficiently and in the best quality, and utilized fully, it is necessary that: (1) the medical faculty inculcate in the student the concept of lifelong learning; (2) the practitioner adopt less time-consuming patterns of practice, to free more of his time for learning; (3) community hospital-based clinical teaching be provided universally; and (4) research be conducted to determine the best of current teaching methods and develop better ones. Conflicting efforts to meet these needs by practitioners (whose primary responsibility it is) and by organized medicine, specialty societies, voluntary health agencies and others have led to inefficient use of medical faculty teachers. The key parties in continuing medical education—practitioner and teacher—can learn best in medical school-administered programs, which need be supported by all other interested organizations.     

The Adequacy of Education for General Practice: A Medical Educator's Viewpoint

The effect on medical education of the doubling of medical knowledge every 10 years is discussed. A brilliant student who might successfully master all the present facts and theories by graduation would be seriously out of date 10 years later, and hopelessly so by retirement age unless he continued his education while in practice. Lengthening the undergraduate course is not considered an effective solution, nor is increasing the general practice internship to two years. Emphasis should be placed on self-education by the medical student, on the inculcation of habits of study and motivation to encourage lifelong learning, and on the provision of more adequate programs of continuing education for the practising doctor. Teachers in medical schools require a better understanding of and interest in the learning processes of their students rather than concentrating on the exposition of their own knowledge.     

General practitioners' continuing medical education within and outside their practice.

To study continuing medical education 96 out of 101 general practitioners chosen at random from the list held by a family practitioner committee were interviewed. The results provided little evidence of regular attendance at local postgraduate centre meetings, though practice based educational meetings were common. Thirty one of the general practitioners worked in practices that held one or more practice based educational meetings each month at which the doctors provided the main educational content. Performance review was undertaken in the practices of 51 of the general practitioners, and 80 of the doctors recognised its value. The general practitioners considered that the most valuable educational activities occurred within the practice, the most valued being contact with partners. They asked for increased contact with hospital doctors. The development of general practitioners'' continuing medical education should be based on the content of the individual general practitioner''s day to day work and entail contact with his or her professional colleagues.     

人文素质教育与医学免疫学专业教育的整合

当前,人们的健康观念和生活方式发生了改变,对医疗卫生服务的需要和期望也发生了变化。然而,医学教育长期以来过分注重医学生的专业知识教育而忽视了人文素质教育,这使得医学生缺乏爱伤观念,对待病人冷漠、和不负责任,功利心较重,缺少奉献精神,从而加剧了医患关系紧张。因此,把医学生人文教育渗透到医学生专业学习的各个过程,使人文素质教育与医学专业教育完美的整合,才能培养出同时具有精湛医术和人文智慧、德才兼备的医生。医学免疫学是生命科学的前沿学科,是联系基础医学和临床医学的桥梁学科之一,也是医学本科生的一门重要的主干课程,其理论和实验技术发展迅猛。本文从医学免疫学专业理论课、实验课、考核等不同环节探讨了人文素质教育和医学免疫学专业教育的整合,进一步地寻找医学免疫学教学中人文素质教育的有效途径,为医学生的人文素质的全面提高提供有益的支持。     

The Role of a Medical Faculty in Reorganizing Family Practice to Meet Current Community Needs

There exists a crisis in the delivery of medical services, particularly by family doctors of whom there is an apparent shortage.A study of family practice in Kingston, Ontario, and in the nearby countryside indicates three critical needs in family practice: professional assistants for the family doctors, efficient office facilities and new methods of delivering family medical care in rural areas. The Faculty of Medicine at Queen''s University has involved itself in a study of these matters and is developing a program to help solve them, by research into the nature of the problems and into methods for alleviating them, by keeping practising physicians informed through research reports and the continuing education program of the Medical School, by the development of pilot projects, and by the evaluation of new services aimed at these problems, independently launched by physicians in the community. Pilot projects to date include two designed to study the use of registered nurses as doctor assistants and another which involves the organization and operation of a university-sponsored community health centre. Last, but by no mean least, the Provincial Government is continually briefed on all these activities.     

Doctors accept a challenge: self-assessment exercises in continuing medical education.

A new approach to continuing medical education by distance learning has been implemented. A series of six patient-management problems or challenges were posted to 20 000 doctors throughout Britain. Each doctor had to decide on the diagnosis, investigations, and treatment of the patients described. The challenges covered problems that were important in the doctor''s day-to-day work and were designed so that he could obtain immediate feedback about his decisions and compare his own responses with those of a specialist and those of his colleagues. Additional information was available by telephone and by post on request. The series has been well received and is being widely used.     

Canadian pediatricians: demographic characteristics,perceptions of training,and continuing medical education.

A nationwide survey of Canadian pediatricians was undertaken to answer questions about demographic and practice characteristics, perceptions of the quantity and quality of residency training in relation to the realities of practice, and the patterns of use and the value of continuing medical education. The findings included a lower average age of pediatricians from that determined 10 years earlier, a higher proportion of women practising pediatrics, and higher proportions of pediatricians entering practice in smaller communities, doing geographic full-time university work and doing mainly consulting work. Pediatrics is still perceived as an attractive discipline, but there is dissatisfaction with the quantity and quality of training in adolescent medicine, ophthalmology, dermatology, psychosocial pediatrics and orthopedics. The changing patterns of continuing medical education among the most recent certificants suggest a need for journals and professional societies to assess how they can better meet the needs of Canadian pediatricians in this area.     

The status of medical physics in radiotherapy in China

PurposeTo present an overview of the status of medical physics in radiotherapy in China, including facilities and devices, occupation, education, research, etc.Materials and methodsThe information about medical physics in clinics was obtained from the 9-th nationwide survey conducted by the China Society for Radiation Oncology in 2019. The data of medical physics in education and research was collected from the publications of the official and professional organizations.ResultsBy 2019, there were 1463 hospitals or institutes registered to practice radiotherapy and the number of accelerators per million population was 1.5. There were 4172 medical physicists working in clinics of radiation oncology. The ratio between the numbers of radiation oncologists and medical physicists is 3.51. Approximately, 95% of medical physicists have an undergraduate or graduate degrees in nuclear physics and biomedical engineering. 86% of medical physicists have certificates issued by the Chinese Society of Medical Physics. There has been a fast growth of publications by authors from mainland of China in the top international medical physics and radiotherapy journals since 2018.ConclusionsDemand for medical physicists in radiotherapy increased quickly in the past decade. The distribution of radiotherapy facilities in China became more balanced. High quality continuing education and training programs for medical physicists are deficient in most areas. The role of medical physicists in the clinic has not been clearly defined and their contributions have not been fully recognized by the community.     

22nd International Conference on Medical Physics 2016, Bangkok,Thailand; Medical physics propelling global health

As medical technology evolves and patient needs increase, the need for well-trained and highly professional medical physicists (MPs) becomes even more urgent. The roles and responsibilities of MPs in various departments within the hospital are diverse and demanding. It is obvious that training, continuing education and professional development of MPs have become essential.One of the ways for an MP to advance his or her knowledge is to participate in conferences and congresses. Last year, the 22nd International Conference of Medical Physics (ICMP 2016) took place in Bangkok, Thailand. The event attracted 584 delegates with most of the participants coming from Asia. It attracted also delegates from 42 countries. The largest delegations were from Thailand, Japan and South Korea. ICMP 2016 included 367 oral presentations and e-posters, most of these being in the fields of Radiation Therapy, Medical Imaging and Radiation Safety. All abstracts were published as an e-book of Abstracts in a supplement to the official IOMP Journal. Many companies had exhibition stands at ICMP2016, thus allowing the participants to see the latest developments in the medical physics-related industry. The conference included 42 mini-symposia, part of the first “IOMP School” activity, covering various topics of importance for the profession and this special issue follows from the success of the conference.     

Continuing medical education: a personal view.

Over many generations doctors have kept up to date in ways which reflect their own learning styles. The current fashion for formalised and policed continuing medical education may prove ineffective unless it is recognised that individual needs must be taken into account. Attendance at formal courses based on lectures and papers may not suit a large proportion of those who attend to acquire the necessary points to satisfy their royal college. The ability to show that health care teams are up to date should come from effective clinical audit, which should also identify local educational needs.     

Canadian medical education: 50 years of innovation and leadership.

Over the past 50 years, many Canadian medical educators have pursued ideas and visions, as individuals in the 1950s and 1960s and later in partnership with various national bodies. Relations between universities and national medical organizations have been productive in dealing with issues of postgraduate education and clinical assessment, in particular. From 1970 to 1990, strong education offices and formally trained educators led to many successes in the areas of research in cognition, continuing medical education and clinical assessment. Canadian medical education has now achieved international recognition for its work in all aspects of the continuum of the physician''s education through vision, initiative and cooperation.     

Continuing Professional Development for teachers

The Institute of Biology has consistently emphasised the need for teachers to have continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities and for more trust to be displayed in their professional judgements. For this reason we are delighted that we now have a flexible CPD scheme that teachers can use to plan and record their continuing development and to demonstrate their professional commitment to CPD. The IOB CPD scheme is available to all members and can help individuals prioritise their CPD needs.     

上海市浦东新区继续医学教育满意度影响因素分析

目的:探讨浦东新区医务人员对继续医学教育的满意度现况。方法:采用自制调查问卷对浦东新区卫生技术培训中心正在接受继续医学教育的155名学员进行调查。结果:浦东新区继续教育总体满意度为61.2%;教育内容满意度为66.4%,教学形式满意度为57.9%,培训教材满意度为53.9%,授课教师满意度为69.7%,教育时间安排满意度为45.4%。结论:浦东新区继续医学教育总体符合区域医学发展与医学人才培养需求,但教学满意度等方面的问题有待改进与提高。     

Extramural Continuing Medical Education

The experience of one Faculty of Medicine in developing programs of continuing medical education in community hospitals is presented. After mention of the importance of regular reading of the medical literature, and the problems created by its growing volume, the necessity of supplementary programs in community hospitals is pointed out. The different patterns of community hospital meetings that evolved to meet various circumstances in the Atlantic Provinces are detailed. A “course” consisting of six weekly evening meetings, followed by morning case presentations and discussions, has proved the most successful form of continuing medical education in community hospitals. Better than half the doctors in the community attend, and active participation is the rule. The importance of advance planning, the techniques of advance planning, and the expense of operating the program are listed. A projection is made that 46 such courses would be required to cover the four Atlantic Provinces adequately, with a staff equivalent to eight full-time teachers and a budget in excess of $200,000. The fact that this is only 7.5% of Canada''s medical population indicates the magnitude of the unmet needs of continuing medical education in this country.     

Continuing Medical Education Tuition: A Survey of Charges

A survey was carried out on the tuition charged for continuing medical education (CME) programs offered by a variety of providers. These included schools of medicine throughout the United States, national organizations and societies, state-wide organizations and societies located in California, and a small group of hospitals in or near Sacramento, California.The fees charged for continuing medical education (expressed in this article as the amount in dollars that a physician must pay for one hour of approved Category I credit) may vary from nothing to more than $20 an hour. The average charge per hour for CME courses sponsored by medical colleges in the United States ranged from none to $11.19 during 1976 and 1977. Recent data indicate that most schools have increased tuition for CME courses because of inflation. Many schools of medicine provide CME through grand rounds, conferences and special lectures at no cost to participants. Similarly, in a small sample of hospitals in California, CME was found to be available at a minimal charge to physicians.Some CME programs are more costly because fees may include the expenses of honored visiting faculty, and costs of food or social activities. There may be further expense if travel is required, although these additional costs may be offset by the benefits of study in a relaxed atmosphere away from practice and office pressures.     

New Mexico's First Case of Plague

In 1981 a decision was made by the University of New Mexico School of Medicine to create a new Office of Community Professional Education whose primary function was to create continuing medical education programs tailored to its constituency. To accomplish this, a needs assessment survey was distributed to a stratified random sample of members of the New Mexico Medical Society practicing throughout the state to determine preferred learning styles, locations of programs and times of year, as well as other determinants for attending such programs. The survey was received by 647 physicians and 469 returned them—a response rate of 72.4 percent.Conclusions reached as a result of the needs assessment will serve as a basis of policy formation for the delivery of continuing medical education at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.     

Beyond the physician charter: reflections on medical professionalism

The numerous challenges now facing the profession of medicine have led to an intense focus on professionalism by individual physicians and by their professional and academic organizations. In 2002, a distinguished group of leaders in internal medicine created the Physician Charter, which calls on physicians to reaffirm medical professionalism through commitment to three principles and 10 responsibilities. The Charter reflects a duty-based ethic that is chiefly concerned with physician competence. This article offers a critical analysis of the Physician Charter from the perspective of the traditional values of medicine as articulated in medical oaths and championed by leaders of past generations, exemplified by William Osler. The authors argue that medical professionalism should reflect the values of a virtue-based ethic that stresses compassion and beneficence, rather than the values of a duty-based ethic. The challenges that now confront the practice of medicine can be addressed successfully only to the extent that physicians promote virtue-ethics, act collectively in the public interest, and render service that clearly transcends their own self-interests.