Continuing medical education and the anesthesiologist

There are a large variety of scheduled activities and courses available to meet the continuing medical education (CME) needs of anesthesiologists. The presentation of CME material varies in format and delivery style. The reasons for attending CME activities include licensure requirements, participation in state and national societies, keeping current with technology, review of old subject material, participation as a lecturer, and other personal reasons. Funding occurs via personal funds, employer support, commercial support, or by research grants. External bodies, such as the American Council of Continuing Medical Education and the American Medical Association, have imposed guidelines in these areas. Methods to evaluate CME activities include retrospective needs analysis based on exit interviews, prospective needs assessment, focus groups, and complex systems such as the CRISIS criteria. Self-directed CME can be evaluated by data collection that identifies how quickly information is received and by the effect of this data on measurable outcome. In the future, CME will increasingly utilize simulators and multimedia computers. Multimedia can bring CME to the physician as opposed to the physician traveling to a CME site. Virtual reality and artificial intelligence are on the horizon and may interface well with the field of anesthesiology due to the technical nature of the discipline and the increasing use of computers and electronic data collection already occurring in clinical practice.