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CMEs ..... a rather serious post

My first contact with online CMEs was in 2012. There was a post on Facebook at that time of a friend of a friend who shared a screenshot of the certificate she got from "Harvard medical school". Just seeing the word Harvard made my heart thump :D :D and still do, to be honest, I am always in awe of those big institutions. Anyway, I started looking for it and found the links to that and if I remember correctly, the cost was about 20$ per credit hour but lucky me, it was for free for people in developing countries like mine, good old Egypt. Anyway, I did quite a few and was quite happy with them, but when I was searching I found that CMEs were quite well known, whether online or live ones. At that point in time, I was a bit embarrassed that I found out about them so late and didn't tell anybody assuming that everybody knows.

Harvard medical school CMEs were quite limited and the longer ones weren't for free. So I started looking around and that's when I found "MEDSCAPE". Words can't describe, how awesome I found this website, how useful in all aspects it was and how it affected my knowledge. As far as I am a concerned for a free website it is definitely the best, or was ( who knows what else is coming up or is on the world wide web). It had a huge wealth of CMEs in all the different aspects of the Medicine and had been steadily increasing, and I have been using it as my main source to stack up of those. BUT and big "but" here after doing many CMEs, reading and comparing with the guidelines and trying to implement that in my clinical practice after discussion with my seniors, I came to the conclusion that, not all the information there can be really used in real life situations. This is, not by any means an attack on an organization that has delivered a really high level of medical information for free and I truly respect and owe them a lot. But I guess having to let others publish their ideas for free, must have made them less selective to what they can accept. I think they tried to not completely discard their standards. I also think they started to realize that, and have made quite changes in the recent CMEs and made a whole line dedicated only to review of guidelines without any Bias to any drugs. Here I said it out frankly, I personally believe they have a lot of biased CMEs, and even as I was going through some of them, you get this same feeling as you have when talking to a persistent salesman, trying to show you how perfect his or her product. It really gets on my nerves.

When I was looking for other sources, I discovered the more elite, sophisticated associations, that publish the highest level of information or the guidelines or their reviews in certificated CME form for free. Like the ASH (American society of hematology) which published some of their "how I treat" series on MEDSCAPE, the how I treat is published for free in the blood magazine of the ASH but no certificates are given except the selective ones published on MEDSCAPE. The ADA (American diabetes association) and they offer a lot of diabetes-related free CMEs and they are really awesome, focused, and case-based in most of the time, also they have the fantastic SAP (self-assessment program) for free and again you get a certificate for finishing that and more important really useful applicable diabetes-related info. 
The third and last one I am going to mention is the NCCN which you can get CMEs related to guidelines, which I really love. Basically when you read the newly published guidelines on their website,then you have to answer some questions, once you get a particular percentage correctly, you get the certificate for the CME. So you get to read the new guidelines and you get a certificate that says you did.

The drawbacks of those awesome elite associations are, not all of them for free! Also each one is a specific branch so you have got to look around if you are a more junior level and have to read in different specialities but they will be a bit advanced I think (but hey that's the way you move forward, one of my favourite quotes, I think by will smith, Life is at the edge of your comfort zone). To be honest I am not that knowledgeable, maybe some society or college for GPs have CMEs and in that case, it will be at the level of care provided in primary care and they will cover a lot of different specialties.

Why am I writing this? if as I mentioned earlier it is soo easy to find for anybody looking, I was surprised at how a lot of people in my contacts had no idea about the CMEs and the certificate you get. Maybe they would come in handy in the CV ...... who knows?
Also, it is worth mentioning but I read an article once, saying that CMEs are not really making an impact on the level of care provided to patients, cause a lot or some might get drawn in just stacking up certificates without mindfully thinking about applying that in real practice. If I have to be completely honest, then I have to say this occurred to me as well, at some point, it was the most important and even if I did useless CMEs just to get the certificate. Now I try to think about each activity I am about to partake and I try to do ones related to already approved guidelines or case-based scenarios not exclusively promoting new drugs.

So to recap:
1.CMEs can be useful as review to your knowledge or add to it or do case-based applications to your knowledge and show it in your CV
2.MEDSCAPE one of the most diverse, but be careful of biased ones
3.NCCN, ASH, ADA
4. Drug companies & doctors: story of corruption by Marcia Angel, she was editor in chief for NEJM and she talked about bias in medicine, everyone in the medical field should read this and try to make up their mind what to accept and what not to. I will put the original article here in a different post.

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