A recent paper in Spine (2009, 34(11), 1218-1226) looked at general practitioner knowledge about back pain treatments.
Doctors who had recently participated in CMEs about lower back pain had significantly better pain management beliefs, supporting the importance of CME for updating people’s knowledge.
One surprising result was that physicians who self-identified as having a special interest in lower back pain were actually less likely to understand the most appropriate treatments, which include continued activity, rather than bed-rest. That’s right, physicians in this survey, with an interest in lower back pain, actually knew less about how to treat it. This may be a statistical hiccup, but it might also fit with the idea that people are actually very poor at self-evaluating their own knowledge and skills (see, for instance Advances in Health Sciences Education, 2004, 9(3):211-24).
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