Winter 2015 (Volume 25, Number 4)

Education’s Holy Grail

By Christopher Penney, MD, FRCPC

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The Holy Grail of continuing medical education (CME) is to prove that an educational activity leads to a favourable change in physician practice, which in turn leads to improved patient outcomes. The first step to that end is a chart audit that you do on patients in your own practice. Chart audits are a way for you to discover what you are really doing, rather than what you think you are doing. After completing the initial audit and reflecting on the results, you may have to close the loop by changing your practice and then prove to yourself that you have done so with a second audit.

Why bother with all this? Why not just continue attending the usual group learning (Section 1) activities as you have done in the past? The answer is simple—the rules have changed! Per Royal College standards, we are now required to complete self-assessment (Section 3) activities.

The question then is would you rather have such programs designed and administered by the CRA, or by some bureaucratic governmental or regulatory agency?

Designing and implementing effective chart audits is difficult to do on your own. That is where the CRA will help. Dr. Henry Averns has volunteered to lead pilot chart audit workshops at the upcoming Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) in Lake Louise. Lessons learned from this workshop will be used to perfect similar workshops open to the general membership at future meetings.

Rheumatology trainees are invited to submit their rheumatologic images for a chance to win a possible travel bursary to the 2017 ASM. Winning images will be selected over the next 12 months; if your image is selected, it may end up in the permanent CRA collection and be used for educational purposes for years to come. Please visit the Education section of the CRA website for more information.

If you have developed a CME self-assessment or practice-reflection program that can be shared with your colleagues, please review the terms of reference for the Practice Reflection Award on the CRA website. You may qualify for one of three awards given annually. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2015.

The CRA is partnering with Meducom to develop multi-sponsor medical publications for self-directed learning activities (Section 2). Money generated from this venture will be used to support educational activities such as chart audits for the CRA membership.

Christopher Penney, MD, FRCPC
Associate Clinical Professor,
University of Calgary
Rheumatologist,
Richmond Road Diagnostic & Treatment Center
Calgary, Alberta