KARACHI, Sept 14: The Vice-Chancellor of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), Prof Masood Hameed Khan, has underscored the need to standardize continuing medical education (CME) programmes offered at various undergraduate and postgraduate medical institutions with necessary provision for quality.
He said this at the inaugural session of a CPSP Workshop on “Accreditation of CME Providers: Policy and Guidelines” on Wednesday.
Prof Masood urged CME providers to make a meaningful contribution to strengthening their programmes using these guidelines.
He said that several institutions and organizations were already conducting CME programmes but there was a dire need of bringing them up to a higher level of quality.
The VC commented that drafts developed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) earlier as well as the current discussed one presented a framework for standardizing CME programmes in the country.
Prof Irshad Waheed, the CPSP secretary on the occasion presented an overview of the CME programmes developed by the CPSP in general and the current activity in particular.
“A national policy and strategic guidelines have been developed by the CPSP during the past two years and have been submitted to the Ministry of Health,” he said.
It was mentioned that the CPSP recognized that the CME represented an essential component of the continuum of medical education and was, therefore, one area of its commitment to the professional development of physicians and dental surgeons.
The CPSP secretary said that medical training courses offered by the CPSP mainly focused on adult learning, development of principles, and above all on inculcating critical thinking for problem solving, problem-based/practice-based learning, and other topics that contributed to ways of thinking about and understanding the CME.
Prof Irshad Waheed mentioned that the CPSP had been engaged in CME activities for several years mostly through its Department of Medical Education (DME).
Dr Sajida Samad, a CME consultant made her presentation on the draft document “Accreditation and Policy and Guidelines”, which would be discussed during the two-day workshop.
She said the CPSP was currently working on assuring quality in CME programmes, which was the next step in the sequence of events.
It was in that context, Dr Sajida Samad said, that a draft accreditation policy and guidelines for CME providers had been developed.
The draft has been reviewed at CPSP-organized workshops in Lahore as well as in Karachi, attended by senior academicians from public and private sectors, directors and managers of health care, and experts in the field of CME.
Dr Sajida said the draft would be revised after the workshop to incorporate recommendations made by participants of the workshop. These would then be sent to the Ministry of Health.—APP
