Continuing Education: the Interrelated Role of the Community Hospital, the Professional Society and the Medical School

¹ Scientific Director, Life Insurance Medical Research Fund Rosemont, Pennsylvania

The importance of continuing education to the practicing physician and to the quality of medical care he provides has made its organization one of the most critical areas in medical education today. Selective programming for each individual is a necessity. Courses and formal educational offerings must be selected to complete the total pattern and spectrum of the physician's educational activies and to fit his individual "educational profile." These offerings, their nature, timing, content, character of presentation must be interrelated in planning to fit into and help stimulate the "motivation" of the user. They must be tailored to the needs of practice and not to the problems and programs of the major health centers from which they, or their purveyors originate. Such planning, relating the chief foci for such courses—the community hospital, the professional society, and the major health center (medical school) will require the correlated efforts of those concerned in each of these sectors. We see the beginnings of an evolving pattern in the efforts of the AMA Committee on Continuing Education, in the efforts of some of our major societies, and in regional planning of several state societies with their medical schools. Such organizational planning of the educational offerings made available to the physician through his structured hospital program, local and state medical societies, his national societies, their meetings and the courses they offer, and through institutes and assemblies, should be analyzed so that these segments may relate one to the other in a more effective manner and may be attuned, through proper pedagogic technics and aspects of presentation, to the varying interests and needs of the groups for which they are structured.