Impractical CME programs: Influential parameters in Iran

Background and objective: Traditional approaches in Continuing Medical Education (CME) appear to be ineffective in any improvement of the patients’ care, reducing the medical errors, and/or altering physicians' behaviors. However, they are still executed by the CME providers, and are popular among the majority of the physicians. In the present study, we have done our best to explore the parameters involved in the degree of CME programs’ effectiveness in Iran. Methods: In this study, 31 participants, consisting of general practitionares, CME experts and providers, were recruited to participate in in-depth interviews and field observations concerning experiences with CME. Application was made of the qualitative paradigm along with the qualitative content analysis, using grounded theory data analysis methodology (constant comparative analysis). Results: Our analysis demonstrated that: based on participant experiences, the insufficient consistency of the training program contents with the demands of GPs, besides non-beneficiary programs for physicians in addition to non-comprehensive educational designs, created a negative attitude to the continuing education among physicians. This could be defined by unrealistic continuing education, which is the main theme here. Conclusion: Impracticable continuing education has created a negative attitude toward the CME programs among physicians so much so that they consider these programs less important, resulting in attending the said programs without any specific aim: they dodge absenteeism just to get the credit points. Evidently, promoting CME programs to improve the performance of physicians requires factual needs assessment over and above adaptation of the contents to the physicians’ performance.