Clinicians in today's health care environment face an overwhelming quantity of knowledge that requires continued education and lifelong learning. However, traditional continuing medical education (CME) courses cannot meet these educational needs, particularly given the proliferation of knowledge and increasing demands on clinicians' time and resources. CME courses that previously offered only in-person, face-to-face education must evolve in a learner-centric manner founded on principles of adult learning theory to remain relevant in the current era. In this article, we describe the transition of the Mayo Clinic Cardiovascular Review for Cardiology Boards and Recertification (CVBR) from a traditional course with only live content to a course integrating live, online, and enduring materials. This evolution has required leveraging technology to maximize learner engagement, offering faculty development to ensure content alignment with learner needs, and strong leadership dedicated to providing learners an unparalleled educational experience. Despite stagnation in growth of the traditional live course, these changes have increased the overall reach of the Mayo Clinic CVBR. Learners engaging with digital content have demonstrated larger increases in knowledge with less educational time commitment. Courses seeking to implement similar changes must develop formal learning objectives focused on learner needs, build an online presence that includes an assessment of learner knowledge, enlist a cohort of dedicated faculty who teach based on principles of adult learning theory, and perpetually refresh educational content based on learner feedback and performance. Following these principles will allow traditional CME courses to thrive despite learners' resource constraints and alternative means to access information.
There is a need for a transformational change in clinical education. In postgraduate medical education we have traditionally had a faculty-centric model. That is, faculty knew what needed to be taught and who were the best teachers to teach it. They built the agenda, and worked with staff to follow Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) accreditation criteria and manage logistics. Changes in the health care marketplace now demand a learner-centric model-one that embraces needs assessments, identification of practice gaps relative to competency, development of learning objectives, contemporary adult learning theory, novel delivery systems, and measurable outcomes. This article provides a case study of one medical specialty society's efforts to respond to this demand.
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