Saturday, November 02, 2013

Hospital medicine CME

Today I'm in San Francisco having just completed UCSF's 17th Annual Hospital Medicine course. First a shout-out to Bob Wachter, course director, for putting together another great meeting. Offerings of this quality are getting harder to find because for the last decade they have been under attack by the CME thought police. The CME thought police operate under several wrong headed assumptions a few of which I'll mention here:

Industry sponsored CME is corrupt and can't be good. This meeting is one of many counter examples.

CME should not take place in a nice relaxing setting. Resort-based CME is now considered a no-no by many institutions which have discontinued their off campus activities.

CME is only worthwhile if it can be tied in a measurable way to physician behavior. And a close corollary..

Didactic CME should be abandoned because it cannot be linked directly to measurable outcomes. Though the benefits of traditional didactic CME are not as concrete as the thought police would like my own career long learning experience strongly convinces me of its value.

Many attendees Tweeted the conference. I was not among them. For me Tweets are a little too sound-bitey to do justice to the course content. But unlike the CME thought police I respect differences in learning needs among individuals and make no presumption about what style of information sharing is best for others. So if Tweets work for you search #UCSFMHP13 and find Tweets aplenty from the conference.  I may blog portions of the content once I have some down time if I'm still as pumped up and expansive as I am now.


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