Mandatory Grand Rounds Evaluations: More Data, Less Information

For several years, physicians have been required to evaluate a continuing medical education (CME) session before receiving a certificate of participation from an accredited provider. The mandatory nature of these evaluations has led to a high number of evaluations that offer information of questionable utility.

We asked our CME evaluation vendor Eeds for all of the CME evaluation timestamps for our grand rounds from August 5 to September 16, 2020. We obtained time-stamped evaluation data from our CME services vendor and compared the times that sessions were evaluated to the start and completion times of those CME sessions.

While almost all attendees completed electronic evaluations, 8% did so before the start of the session and half did so before its completion.

Making evaluations mandatory has had the effect of lowering the quality of the data thus obtained. In an age that has been described as the "graying of grand rounds," there are more effective strategies to enhance educational value and learner satisfaction.