{"id":9413,"date":"2019-10-27T16:33:56","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T20:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=9413"},"modified":"2019-10-27T20:43:33","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T00:43:33","slug":"the-enduring-appeal-of-live-face-to-face-real-time-continuing-medical-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/the-enduring-appeal-of-live-face-to-face-real-time-continuing-medical-education\/2019\/10\/27\/","title":{"rendered":"The Enduring Appeal of Live, Face-to-Face, Real-Time Continuing Medical Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These guys clearly have no future.<\/p><\/div>\n

Around 15 years ago, after high-speed internet became a de facto part of work life and was rapidly becoming more widely available at home, I attended a meeting with other medical educators to decide what to do about our various post-graduate courses.<\/p>\n

The wisdom in the room was that most continuing medical education (CME) would soon migrate online, replacing live courses.<\/p>\n

It just made too much sense — CME could be done at home, or from the office, and would not require the cost or hassles of travel, parking, and hotels. Online CME would minimize time away from the office, and would also be more family-friendly.<\/p>\n

The message I took away from this meeting about our beloved courses?<\/p>\n

They were doomed.<\/p>\n

My wife, a practicing primary care pediatrician, agreed — why would anyone travel to go to CME courses when they could get the same required credits in the comfort of their own homes? And she’s hardly ever wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n

But this is one of those rare times where everyone<\/em> got it wrong. Live CME courses never went away. In fact, in the annals of bad predictions, the anticipated demise of face-to-face CME is right up there with Decca records’ choosing not to sign a certain Liverpool-based rock band because “guitar groups are on their way out.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, there are plenty of online CME opportunities. But live CME remains extraordinarily popular — in a survey done of clinicians by a marketing company, 80 percent reported that live conferences were the CME activities they participated in most often<\/a>. Live CME was also the format they preferred above all others.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking about this today because tomorrow is the first day of our annual course, “Infectious Diseases in Primary Care”<\/a>. Not only have we had steadily increasing attendance for years, we’ve also been able to add an additional optional symposium on HIV and viral hepatitis for the PCP. The attendance at our course is twice what it was 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

And we’re hardly alone. (Though I like to think our trying to get our very<\/em> best teachers cover the most<\/em> important topics are at least possibly responsible.)\u00a0 Our hospitalists at the Brigham started a course a few years ago that has been staggeringly successful — so big it sells out every year. I hear from my colleagues at other academic medical centers that they also continue to have excellent demand.<\/p>\n

So what gives? I can think of a few explanations.<\/p>\n