Evaluation of continuing medical education: making a difference.

This article is the fifth in a series of continuing health professional education and it focuses on the evaluation of continuing medical education (CME). Evaluation is the final step in the overall instructional design cycle in that it measures the effectiveness of CME. This article presents a decision-making flow chart which illustrates a means of determining what kind of an evaluation is appropriate for a given educational activity. The major types of evaluations are formative and summative, each having cognitive, psychomotor and affective categories. The evaluation data sources should be triangulated and may be either objective or subjective. There should be clear linkage between the course goals/objectives, the evaluation measures and the results of the evaluation. This will improve the CME process and make it more cost effective.