Continuing Medical Education in obstetrics and gynaecology: the challenge of the nineties

The Obligatory Continuing Medical Education (CME) programme of the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RACOG) which is linked to time-limited certification has now been in operation for over a decade. Its somewhat unique features have attracted widespread interest both nationally and internationally and may be seen as part of an international movement towards obligatory CME in Western Medicine. However, the programme should also be seen as just a part of the educational responses necessary as the medical profession moves into the 1990s, particularly for those of us in the discipline of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. This paper reviews the increasing pressures from within the profession and from the community towards the obligatory CME concepts pioneered by the RACOG, but suggests that the challenges that have been faced in this area in the past although significant, are much less than those which will be faced in the 1990's, as the discipline addresses the challenges of educating obstetricians in the third phase of Continuing Medical Education--education in managing the environment in which our discipline is practised.