Participants in the meeting discussed the Regulations on Continuing Medical Education (CME), the procedure for implementing pilot projects to promote CME, doctors’ motivation for continuing education, and the choice of high-profile subjects and doctors involved in the project. All of this will make it possible to modernise the existing system of auxiliary professional education under skill upgrade programmes.
The quality of CME was another topic under discussion. Two opposing views were expressed: educational institutions should compete for "doctor students", or vice versa these institutions and professional communities should consolidate their efforts and form partnerships. Nevertheless, it is clear that doctors involved in continuing education projects must have an opportunity to learn about different schools of thought.
The participants agreed on the necessity of making training convenient for doctors and relying on all types of educational activities, including conferences and workshops, publications of articles, library work, study of interface units, simulation centre training, and so on.
So far, the pilot projects only cover specialists with higher education, but the members of the Coordinating Council suggested that similar educational projects should be developed for nurses.
The participants identified doctors’ motivation for studying as the main problem. Under the 12-month pilot project, doctors will be offered 144 hours of training at a state educational institution plus an additional 22 hours to be sponsored by a medical society. The important thing in this context is that most of these hours should be used in parallel with their main job. To motivate doctors for continuous training, it was suggested that the project should primarily cover those who are to be certified before 2015, which is approximately 20% of doctors in each health specialty. Doctors participating in the pilot project will enjoy preferences with regard to obtaining certification by the Board and out-of-turn allocation of category.
It was also noted that doctors not involved in the pilot project should be allowed to participate in relevant events and receive credits or educational activity hours.
The next meeting of the Coordinating Council will be held before July 15 and will be attended by representatives of pilot communities and regions. The participants will discuss concrete plans for the drafting of pilot projects to be launched on October 1.
Source: Ministry of Healthcare
