The Journal of continuing education in the health professions
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2003
Spouse/partner violence education as a predictor of screening practices among physicians.
Spouse/partner violence is a major public health problem that affects 3 to 6 million women per year. Many studies show that the majority of health care practitioners do not detect or respond to cases of spouse/partner violence in their practice. Research suggests that there are potential barriers to reporting or detecting this problem. A barrier often cited is lack of proper education or training regarding spouse/partner violence. The objective of this study was to determine if physicians who received spouse/partner violence education at various stages of their careers were more likely to screen patients for spouse/partner violence. ⋯ Screening every patient for exposure to spouse/partner violence is the ideal situation. This study indicates that education about spouse/partner violence has a significant impact on screening tendencies if provided during a physician's residency program.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2003
A needs assessment of medical school faculty: caring for the caretakers.
We conducted an assessment of need for faculty development and mentoring in a medical school to guide program planning and use of scarce resources. ⋯ Attention to faculty humanistic needs and the disparity between the perceived needs by faculty and senior administrators may help explain the attrition of faculty in academic medicine.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2003
The uncertain future of continuing medical education: commercialism and shifts in funding.
To preserve a professionally responsible system for continuing medical education (CME), medicine must recognize and address two powerful economic forces: commercial interests and societal resource limitations. Commercial support to accredited CME providers is now more than 50% of total CME income. The cumulative influence is increasingly biasing CME development, presentation, and participation toward topics that benefit commercial interests. ⋯ Financial pressures are likely to increase, potentially leading to controls on drug costs and significant reductions in commercial support of CME. Financial pressures on physicians' incomes may limit the extent to which registration fees could offset these reductions. Physicians and their professional organizations should recognize these threats to the objectivity, funding, and infrastructure of the CME system and they should work to ensure a viable CME system in the future.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2002
Comparative StudyPhysician Internet medical information seeking and on-line continuing education use patterns.
Although physician Internet use patterns have been studied, little attention has been paid to how current physician learning and change theories relate to physician Internet information seeking and on-line learning behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine physician medical information-seeking behaviors and their relevance to continuing education (CE) providers who design and develop on-line CE activities. ⋯ The importance of the Internet to physician professional development is growing rapidly. Access to on-line continuing medical education must be immediate, relevant, credible, and easy to use. A sense of high utility demands content that is focused and well indexed. The roles of the CE provider must be reshaped to include helping physicians seek and construct the kind of knowledge they need to improve patient care.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2002
Academia-industry collaboration in continuing medical education: description of two approaches.
Although concerns have been raised about industry support of continuing medical education (CME), there are few published reports of academia-industry collaboration in the field. We describe and evaluate Pri-Med, a CME experience for primary care clinicians developed jointly by the Harvard Medical School (HMS) and M/C Communications. ⋯ When CME presentations for primary care physicians receive direct support from industry, the range of offered topics is narrower than when programs are developed independently of such support. There appear to be no differences in the perceived quality of presentations delivered with and without such support. Our experience suggests that a firewall between program planners and providers of financial support will result in a broader array of educational subjects relevant to the field of primary care.