A new look at continuing education in family practice

The rapid increase of medical knowledge in recent years, together with continuously changing methods and patterns of practice, have made continuing medical education today a critical and challenging problem. It is now recognized that the large majority of a physician's medical knowledge over a practice career is derived from postgraduate learning after his initial formal undergraduate and graduate medical education. Despite the present importance of continuing medical education, we still have a relatively ineffective system which is not easily accessible to the practicing physician and which often fails to meet his individual learning needs. This paper critiques our past efforts in this area, describes some principles of learning, and suggests some new approaches to make continuing education in family practice more accessible and effective.