Expanded Outcomes Framework for Effective CME - The Way Forward for Pakistan

Continuing Medical Education (CME) providers recognize the importance to plan educational activities that focus to improving and assessing knowledge, competency and performance outcomes rather than on attendance and satisfaction. This perspective proposes using an expanded outcomes framework for planning and assessing CME. The expanded outcomes framework supports backward planning, that starts with the population health outcomes (level 7) and moves backward, to providing continuing education for physicians that may result in improved outcomes. We the authors recognize the complexity of this framework, the recently evolved CME system in Pakistan, and the limited resources; and therefore, we suggest that planning and assessment should begin at level 3, physician knowledge. Thus, be mindful of the end and the scope of this framework that is associated and leads toward the improvement of population health outcomes.