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Postgraduate education: does it improve the knowledge base of practitioners with time?
W S McDougal1, M E Lunz, G Hirst
1Department of Urology, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, Boston 02114, USA.
Purpose:
We evaluate the effect of the provision of postgraduate educational material on improving practitioner knowledge base during a 3-year period.
Materials And Methods:
A total of 210 urologists were provided 67 monographs in a 2-year period. They were given a pretest before and posttest 1 year after receipt of all monographs.
Results:
There was significant improvement in posttest scores for the group as a whole. Improvement correlated with years post-training and number of monographs read. Multivariate analysis revealed the number of monographs read was the only independent predictor of outcome.
Conclusions:
Although the improvement in test scores was significant and did correlate with the postgraduate educational material read, it was modest. This finding raises significant concerns about the usefulness of this format for graduate medical education.