Continuing education for medical laboratory personnel: The telephone conference approach

In the wake of a health care knowledge explosion, maintaining practitioner competency is an important concern of both practicing health care professionals and the many certifying and licensing bodies. One approach to this issue, particularly for professionals in rural areas, is the use of telephone conferencing. With this approach, the practitioner is able to participate in continuing education by listening to a lecture broadcast over conventional long-distance telephone lines. In advance of each program, printed and visual materials are forwarded to the respective conference sites. At the end of the lecture, each participant is given the opportunity to engage the speaker in a question and answer session. This paper describes the programmatic activities related to developing, implementing, and evaluating the telephone conference approach. This approach, with respect to the continuing education of medical laboratory personnel, has been operating at the University of Nebraska Center for the past seven years.