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An Analysis of 2 3 Million Participations in the Continuing Medical Education
Program of a General Medical Journal: Suitability, User Characteristics, and
Evaluation by Readers
#MMPMID28373156
Christ H
; Franklin J
; Griebenow R
; Baethge C
J Med Internet Res
2017[Apr]; 19
(4
): e49
PMID28373156
show ga
BACKGROUND: Physicians frequently use continuing medical education (CME) in
journals. However, little is known of the evaluation of journal CME by readers
and also user and participation characteristics. Deutsches Ärzteblatt, the
journal of the German Medical Association, is distributed to every physician in
Germany and regularly offers its readers CME articles. Therefore, it provides a
unique opportunity to analyze a journal CME program directed at an entire
population of physicians. OBJECTIVE: The aim is to show key sociodemographic
characteristics of participants, frequency and temporal distributions of
participations, and to analyze whether the articles are suitable for a general
medical audience, how physicians rate the CME articles, how successful they were
in answering simple multiple-choice questions, and to detect distinct clusters of
participants. METHODS: Using obligatory online evaluation forms and
multiple-choice questions, we analyzed all participations of the entire 142 CME
articles published between September 2004 and February 2014. We compared
demographic characteristics of participants with official figures on those
characteristics as provided by the German Medical Association. RESULTS: A total
of 128,398 physicians and therapists (male: 54.64%, 70,155/128,393; median age
class 40 to 49 years) participated 2,339,802 times (mean 16,478, SD 6436
participations/article). Depending on the year, between 12.33% (44,064/357,252)
and 16.15% (50,259/311,230) of all physicians in the country participated at
least once. The CME program was disproportionally popular with physicians in
private practice, and many participations took place in the early mornings and
evenings (4544.53%, 1,041,931/2,339,802) as well as over the weekend (28.70%,
671,563/2,339,802). Participation by specialty (ranked in descending order) was
internal medicine (18.25%, 23,434/128,392), general medicine (16.38%,
21,033/128,392), anesthesiology (10.00%, 12,840/128,392), and surgery (7.06%,
9059/128,392). Participants rated the CME articles as intelligible to a wider
medical audience and filling clinically relevant knowledge gaps; 78.57%
(1,838,358/2,339,781) of the sample gave the CME articles very good or good
marks. Cluster analysis revealed three groups, one comprised of only women, with
two-thirds working in private practice. CONCLUSIONS: The CME article series of
Deutsches Ärzteblatt is used on a regular basis by a considerable proportion of
all physicians in Germany; its multidisciplinary articles are suitable to a broad
spectrum of medical specialties. The program seems to be particularly attractive
for physicians in private practice and those who want to participate from their
homes and on weekends. Although many physicians emphasize that the articles
address gaps in knowledge, it remains to be investigated how this impacts
professional performance and patient outcomes.
|Adult
[MESH]
|Education, Medical, Continuing/*statistics & numerical data
[MESH]
|Humans
[MESH]
|Male
[MESH]
|Middle Aged
[MESH]
|Periodicals as Topic/*statistics & numerical data
[MESH]
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