Patient care appraisal

This paper will highlight the contributions of Patient Care Appraisal at Dalhousie University to the developing field of CME research. Since that experience goes back in excess of twelve years, a comprehensive review in the space available would be very superficial. It would seem more appropriate for me to highlight for you the contribution we believe Patient Care Appraisal (PCA) research will make to the developing field of Continuing Medical Education research. I will begin with a brief review of the elements that make PCA relevant to the theme of this meeting, followed by a summary of our experience introducing the process into hospitals in our three provinces in the early 1970's. The first research project, which attempted to link PCA to physician behavior change in the ambulatory setting, began in 1977 and was followed by a project which links the process to patient health outcomes.