Why the need?
There has long been a recognized need to provide the basis for continuous learning of health care professions in keeping pace with the rapidly changing and improving medical services, practices, products, regulations, and treatments.
The pace of knowledge acceleration in all areas of society has reached a point where it is no longer possible for members of health care professions and society to stay abreast of essential knowledge and practices.
While the traditional approach to education will continue to underpin the initial and basic learning needs within the health care professions, it must be supplemented to keep pace with the need for lifelong learning.
There is, therefore, an urgent need to redesign the present model of continuing medical education (CME) and professional development (CPD) of health care professions around the world, as the existing model of delivery has become outdated, unsustainable and out of touch with ground reality.
Problems with the existing models.
1. No Accountability.
There is little or no accountability of health care professions continuing competence and learning.
2. Lack of meaningful outcomes.
There are no mechanisms in place for ensuring meaningful outcomes from learning initiatives undertaken.
3. Learning not aligned with quality.
There is very little desire and/or willpower to align learning programs with quality improvement initiatives.
4. Learning not practice or system-based.
Practice-based and system-based learning is still an “alien” concept.
5. Tremendous institutional barriers.
There are tremendous institutional barriers due to lack of understanding and/or resistance to adopt new reality of CME/CPD vision.
Vision for new Continuing Professional Development (CPD) / Continuing Medical Education (CME) model.
There is an overwhelming mass of information and research accumulating within medical profession in general . Medical knowledge is expected to double every year or less at present. Scope of this challenge simply exceeds the capacity or the capability of a traditional academic institute.
1. Learning & quality improvement initiatives must fulfil societal needs.
2. Learning & quality improvement initiatives must fulfil users’ individualized needs.
3. Learning needs to be lifelong and part of the system of care.
Suggested enablers.
1. Adopting new models of clinical education.
For e.g. using behavioural insights, applying person-centred design thinking, technology-enabled, etc.
2. Designing personalized / individualized learning, assessment and leadership development initiatives.
Empowering learners and increasing ownership.
3. Adopting new information and education technology.
Promoting efficiency, optimizing resources, helping healthcare sustainability.
4. Cross-disciplinary learning.
Learning about, from and with one another i.e. collaboratively.
5. Development of leaders in health professions education & health care delivery.
Towards a learning, responsive and sustainable health & care ecosystem.
Ultimately, it's all about culture change and brave leadership.
Organizational / institutional resiliency.
All the partners and stakeholders within the health care system need to work together to overcome the resistance and barriers to the much needed change.
Co-creating solutions.
At the same time, it is also imperative to engage with the society in a meaningful manner and to co-create solutions.
Appropriateness.
Delivering right care and needs-based just-in-time learning is critical to the creation of an efficient, responsive and sustainable health care ecosystem.
Strong leadership.
It is vital for health care policy and decision makers to leverage and enable use of technology in integrating health databases to further develop capacity in data analytics, machine-learning and the use of real world evidence to inform clinical practice and learning needs. It is also vital that they ensure societal accountability by encouraging the provision of further opportunities for development of leadership skills and supporting research and innovation in delivery of lifelong learning.
Encouraging lifelong learning & empowering society.
Critical to the success of this goal is to empower patients & their families, engaging communities in a meaningful manner and developing more personalized services and learning opportunities.