The Journal of continuing education in the health professions
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2008
Historical ArticleAbraham Flexner and the roots of interprofessional education.
This paper explores the culture underlying the practices of physicians and other health care providers in the 20th century and implications for interprofessional education for collaborative practice in the 21st century. Today's practice of medicine flows from the 1920s work of Dr. ⋯ However, a sequela has been the "stovepiping" of professions, in both their education and their practices, with minimal interaction among professions, and provider- or system-centric care rather than patient-centric care. The result has been learning environments that lack sympathy for interprofessional education and its concomitant of learning and working together.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2008
Continuing medical education, professional development, and requirements for medical licensure: a white paper of the Conjoint Committee on Continuing Medical Education.
To provide the best care to patients, a physician must commit to lifelong learning, but continuing education and evaluation systems in the United States typically require little more than records of attendance for professional association memberships, hospital staff privileges, or reregistration of a medical license. While 61 of 68 medical and osteopathic licensing boards mandate that physicians participate in certain numbers of hours of continuing medical education (CME), 17 of them require physicians to participate in legislatively mandated topics that may have little to do with the types of patients seen by the applicant physician. ⋯ State medical boards should require valid and reliable assessment of physicians' learning needs and collaborate with physician and CME communities to assure that legislatively mandated CME achieves maximal benefit for physicians and patients. To assure the discovery and use of best practices for continuing professional development and for maintenance of competence, research in CME and physician assessment should be raised as a national priority.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2008
Effective interprofessional teams: "contact is not enough" to build a team.
Teamwork and interprofessional practice and learning are becoming integral to health care. It is anticipated that these approaches can maximize professional resources and optimize patient care. Current research, however, suggests that primary health care teams may lack the capacity to function at a level that enhances the individual contributions of their members and team effectiveness. This study explores perceptions of effective primary health care teams to determine the related learning needs of primary health care professionals. ⋯ Several characteristics of effective primary health care teams and the related knowledge and skills that professionals require as effective team members are identified. Effective teamwork requires specific cognitive, technical, and affective competence.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2008
Requesting a commitment to change: conditions that produce behavioral or attitudinal commitment.
There is a lack of clarity in the conceptualization of commitment underlying the commitment to change (CTC) procedure used by organizers of continuing education in the health professions. This article highlights the two distinct conceptualizations of commitment that have emerged in the literature outside health care education and practice. ⋯ As a result, the article also demonstrates the need for clarity in the conceptualization of commitment, especially to guide empirical research into the nature and strength of commitment produced by the variety of CTC strategies. Such research is relevant in increasing our understanding of how and why CTCs are able to influence practice change.
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J Contin Educ Health Prof · Jan 2008
Review"Directed" self-assessment: practice and feedback within a social context.
Accurate self-assessment appears to be difficult and, some would propose, even impossible. Recent reviews suggest that peer assessment may be more accurate and that multisource feedback (MSF) may inform self-assessment. We had conducted a series of studies of family physicians in an MSF program including assessments from patients, medical colleagues, and coworkers and self-assessment. Using this body of research, this article explores self-assessment within the social context of multisource feedback and investigates the influence of feedback from peers and others upon self-assessment. ⋯ We propose a model of "directed" self-assessment to facilitate the integration of external feedback, especially negative feedback, with self-perceptions and enable its use for practice improvement. Implications for education and research include increasing understanding of ways physicians assimilate external feedback and of the role of educators as facilitators of "directed" self-assessment and self-learning to assist physicians in integrating external feedback.