Self-assessment tests. The psychiatric knowledge and skills self-assessment program.

Abstract

It is obviously necessary that there should be maintenance of the professional competence of all physicians who, after the completion of formal undergraduate and graduate medical education, are practicing medicine, whether they are in private practice or active on a hospital or medical school or clinic staff. Without such maintenance of competence, the quality of medical care given to patients cannot be maintained or improved. In fact, it tends to become outdated and eventually deteriorates. So challenging is the information explosion in medicine and the advent of the newest technologies that it is said, with some justice, that the "half-life" of a physician's knowledge and skills is now about ten years. In our consumer-oriented society, what is increasingly called the "quality gap" in medical care has become of critical concern to medicine. At least two state medical societies have required their members to take a stipulated number of hours of