Learning-by-Concordance for Family Physicians: Revealing its Value for Continuing Professional Development in...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Introduction Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is an important part of a physician's professional life. Yet, providing effective in-service training solutions is a persistent challenge for CPD planners. Methods Primary care physicians are frequently confronted with skin lesionsthey feel ill-prepared to manage. A dermatology Learning-by-concordance (LbC) online activity was developed and offered to family physicians for CPD credit. We were interested in finding out whether this online tool was suitable for CPD. Following a pilot phase, the on-line activity was launched and 45 geographically dispersed primary care physicians completed it. They participated in a telephone conference a week later with an expert to discuss outstanding questions. Evaluation was carried out by a survey that was available immediately after the last case. Results Participants found the on-line training tool user friendly and should be implemented on a larger scale. Participants found the dermatology concepts discussed allowed them to increase their knowledge and apply it to their practice. Discussion Among the strengths of LbC is that the learning task resemble those of a primary physician's daily practice. Finally, our study reveals that LbC is easily integrated in busy work schedules and thus is an effective learning solution for CPD.