CME activities associated with positive job satisfaction

According to an article published in BioMedCentral in May 2007, participation in CME activities has been shown to be associated with positive job satisfaction and negatively with job stress.

As advances in information technology, coping with hugh amount of medical knowledge is a major challenge to most doctors, a follow up questionnaire study was carried out in 2004 involving 1005 Norwegian doctors to investigate their CME activities and their perceived ability of keeping themselves updated and their job satisfaction.

They found that Norwegian doctors spent less time on attending courses but more on medical reading, however both were regarded the most important sources of information. Those with 5 or more CME course days were significantly more likely to be able to obtain sufficient information for keeping updated in their daily work than those who had not attended courses. There was a strong positive effect of the number of hours spent per week on medical reading. They also found that high job satisfaction was strongly associated with doctors' perceived ability to obtain sufficient information to keep professionally updated.

The authors concluded that this "gives good reasons for recommending a high level of CME activities among doctors."

Source:"Doctors’ learning habits: CME activities among Norwegian physicians over the last decade" BMC Medical Education 2007, 7:10 ( free full text)

Medical grand rounds and free food

While I was searching for some CME resources for our Foundation Year doctors, I came accross an interesting research article "If you feed them, they will come: A prospective study of the effects of complimentary food on attendance and physician attitudes at medical grand rounds at an academic medical center" BMC Medical Education 2007, 7:22


It reports on the results of a prospective study of the effects of providing complimentary food on attendance at medical grand rounds (MGR) and a web-based survey that assessed the attitudes of attendees on the provision of complimentary food at MGRs.


The data suggest that faculty, fellows, and residents are more likely to attend MGR if free food is provided and less likely to attend if free food is not provided.


MGR is a central teaching activity in most departments of medicine at academic medical centers, but attendance by faculty, fellows, and residents appears to be decreasing. The study concludes that providing free food may be an effective strategy for increasing attendance at MGR.


What are your views and experience on the effects of free food on physicians' attendance to MGRs or other educational activities?

CME and drug marketing

Daniel Carlat, Professor of Psychiatrist at Tufts Medical School, Massachusetts, Boston, wrote in the article "Diagnosis : conflict of interest" in The New York Times that drug industry financing medical education has increased fourfold since 1998 and has "set the agenda for what doctors learn about drugs, crucial information about potential drug dangers is played down to the detriment of patient care."


The current debate of the diabetes drug Avandia and the withdrawal of Vioxx in 2004 are just two examples of such corruption. He said that "drug companies should never have been allowed to become the primary educators for America's doctors"



It was suggested that CME sponsored by drug companies shlould/would be discredited, doctors would be encouraged to seek CME from other sources. "A commitment to unbiased education would allow doctors to learn about drug risks sooner for the good of doctors and patients."


An earlier posting "There is no free lunch" discussed the relationship between physicians and drug industry and how it changes physicians prescribing behaviour.