Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Physicians: Take control of your continuing medical education before it’s too late!

A few vocal individuals and groups are beating the drum for the elimination of pharmaceutical industry support for continuing medical education. The detractors cite no evidence (there isn’t any) to back up their recommendations. Also conspicuously lacking from these discussions are the voices of practicing physicians. Survey after survey has indicated that practicing doctors overwhelmingly favor the preservation of industry support for CME. Here’s another one to add to the list, via CE Measure.

The agitators claim that by getting rid of drug company support the medical profession will take control of its education. But what’s becoming increasingly clear from these survey data is that the while the agitators may well hijack control of professional education they don’t represent the profession. Doctors in the trenches of patient care have been silent on this issue, seemingly oblivious to this growing agenda to restrict their CME choices.

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