Educational needs assessment in physical medicine and rehabilitation: the Foundation of Continuing Medical Education.

Continuing medical education (CME) needs of practitioners are often poorly defined, leaving CME providers little objective data for planning programs. Likewise, practitioners may not have a clear objective picture of their educational needs before engaging in CME. This paper identifies the responsibilities of both CME providers and practitioners for the identification of CME learners' needs as the first step in planning an efficient educational program. A quality CME program starts with learner needs assessment (LNA), plans and implements accordingly, and finishes with an evaluation linked to the initial LNA. Educational process effectiveness and cost effectiveness are two important results of the use of LNA. Four specific contributions of LNA to planning CME are also discussed: (1) who/what to assess, (2) identification of causes, (3) how to assess and (4) how to decide. This systematic LNA process has the potential to improve the quality of future CME offerings by allowing physiatrists to objectively assess their educational needs and by giving CME providers better data for planning CME.