Improving continuing medical education and addressing the challenge of instituting reaccreditation

The present postgraduate education allowance structure for general practitioners is unacceptable and inadequate on a number of counts. Improvements could be made in continuing medical education by involving learners more actively, through giving them greater ownership of their continuing medical education aims and by integrating it with the current moves towards reaccreditation. Current proposals for the implementation of reaccreditation are expensive, unacceptable to many in the general practice profession, and unconnected with present continuing medical education arrangements and the existing education structure. It would be more sensitive to current attitudes, more practical, a better use of existing facilities and more logical to improve continuing medical education by linking its improvement to the evaluation of reaccreditation in as acceptable and simple a way as possible. A framework is proposed, based on an annual educational general practitioner assessment visit in which a personal learning plan is developed as a focus for an individual's continuing medical education needs.