Medical education: hitting the target but missing the point.

There are dangers that a target-driven culture could be affecting medical education. In continuous professional development, many accreditation authorities require physicians to complete a fixed number of hours of continuous professional development per year or to acquire a certain amount of continuous professional development points per year. However, all these numbers are arbitrary and worse reinforce the message to physicians that it is time spent on learning that is important. In fact far more important than hours spent is the ability to assess learning needs, learn in the light of these needs and put learning into action. Targets have also started to come to the fore is in undergraduate and postgraduate training programmes, and in certain clinical topics such as dementia and in workforce development. Targets in any walk of life should be SMART - that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time limited. However, not all targets in medical education satisfy these criteria of good-quality targets. There is also the wider question as to whether there is a good fit between medical education - which is largely a qualitative activity - and educational targets - which by their nature must be quantitative. Put simply, targets may not fit with education.