Redesigning Continuing Education in the Health Professions

A recent report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) suggested several ways to improve continuing education in the health professions.  The recommendations in the report would greatly improve the continuing education, especially for educational programs for teams of providers from different disciplines. 

Some of the problems with the current system identified in the report:

• a lack of scientific understanding of what kinds of training are effective
• fragmented oversight of continuing education

Lack of Scientific Understanding of Effective Training
One of the things I'm interested in, and the reason I'm writing this blog, is to explore the science of learning and to look at how that has been, and can be applied to continuing education in the health professions.  We know a lot about how professionals learn, but there is much more that we need to understand. 

Fragmented Oversight of Continuing Education
Each discipline (doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, etc) has their own accreditation body and their own set of rules to follow.  This isn't a problem if you're planning learning for only one group of professionals.  More and more though, it's becoming apparent that teams of professionals who work together with specific patient populations, should be trained together.  It can be a struggle to create an accredited learning experience, that meets the requirements for each of the separate groups, especially if you're trying to do something that is slightly unconventional.