The Perceived Effectiveness of Online vs Physical Continuous Medical Education Sessions among Malaysian Doctors: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Abstract

Ever since the pandemic, many educational platforms have gone online including Continuing Medical Education (CME). The objective of this study was to identify perceived focus and perceptions of both modes amongst Malaysian doctors. This was a cross-sectional study conducted from May to June 2020 via an online questionnaire. The researchers sent out the questionnaire to doctors via social media to study the perceived focus amongst attendees. We included all those who claimed to have participated in both types of CME previously. The final analysis included 357 respondents. The mean age of respondents was 46.54 (SD:17.52) years and the mean duration of practice was 21.46 (13.61) years. From the total, 46.5% of them were General Practitioners (GPs) and 49.9% were from the private sector. From the total, 60.4% of them participated in the online CME from their homes and 51.7% of them accessed it via their handphones. In a 60-minute CME activity, the perceived ability to focus (focus which participant perceive to have had/attained) in a physical CME was 32.94 (SD: 13.17) minutes and 32.65 (12.61) minutes for online CME (p=0.76). The perceived attention span and participation were better in a physical CME (both p<0.001) and attention was mainly diverted to do other things during the meeting for online CME (p<0.001). Although online CME was convenient during the pandemic, many participants felt they had a shorter attention span, less participation and had some attention diversion during online CME. Improving participation and attention span for online CME is very much needed.