Continuing medical education: 1960s to the present.

Since the 1960s, continuing medical education (CME) has undergone a period of reappraisal of its effectiveness and consideration of alternatives to the traditional teaching model. In this paper the authors discuss three proposals that were developed out of these concerns: the establishment of a national plan, a process program model based on the identified needs of physicians, and the use of mandatory continuing education as part of a relicensing/recertification procedure. The problems and controversies in each of these areas are explored. Recommendations for changes in CME are discussed and summarized into three areas: organizational needs, programmatic needs, and physician needs. The authors attempt to point out the general agreement in these recommendations as well as the difficulty of achieving any uniform or orderly change in the future.