'Swallowing the medicine': determining the present and desired modes for delivery of continuing medical education to rural doctors.

A National Needs Assessment of the continuing professional educational needs of Australian rural medical practitioners was conducted on a model previously successfully used in Queensland. The objective was to describe and quantify the continuing education needs of rural medical practitioners in order that service providers might more expeditiously set educational curricula in continuing medical education (CME) provision. A major component of the study was to determine which modes of CME delivery rural doctors currently use and which they would prefer to use. Rural doctors were perceived to be slow to access new technologies and training may be required in order for the doctors to use them.