An overview of CME/CPD credit systems around the world

Abstract

Internationally, there is a move to incorporate continuing medical education (CME) as an integral part of the medical education continuum. CME system is very complex. Unlike the undergraduate and postgraduate medical education systems, which are mainly situated within the medical schools, the CME system has many variations across the globe. To date, there have been few systematic approaches to document the CME systems internationally. This paper is an initial attempt to document some regional variations and trends related to CME credit systems. Very little has been written about the different CME credit systems in the scientific literature. The data for this paper were collected through field notes and gray literature, including conference proceedings. This paper is an overview paper of the CME credit systems, and we recognize this is an ambitious task given the professional, local, national and regional variations of CME credit systems. We hope this paper will create a discussion among the CME stakeholde...