Claude Guimond (Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec); Pierre Raîche (Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec); Martin Labelle (Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec)

Background

July 1st 2007, the Collège des médecins du Québec (CMQ), the Quebec medical licensing authority, strongly suggested that all physicians use a self-managed continuing professional development plan (SCPDP) to maintain their competency.

Summary of Work

A major concern of the FMOQ’s CPD Division is to meet the perceived training needs of family physicians, our members. We have developed tools to help physicians meet the new stricter obligation of the CMQ. Among these tools is a SCPDP for physicians in both paper and online format. The electronic version allows physicians to record their needs and express them spontaneously. The FMOQ can search, anonymously, the SCPDP database to identify needs, avoiding any needs assessment questionnaire bias. We have just implemented a tagging system and “cloud grouping” which allows regional CME leaders to view the main needs expressed at a glance. With over 3100 members using the online FMOQ-SCPDP, the database will allow us to compare conventional questionnaires derived needs assessments with spontaneously expressed needs.

Conclusion

We encourage our members to periodically review their SCPCP. By doing this, they continuously update database of spontaneously expressed training needs. This may reduce the need for questionnaires and diversify the range of tools or methods, and accelerate the assessment of perceived needs, increasing their accuracy, leading to improvement in the development of training tools and workshops.

Keywords

• Needs assessment
• Adequate tools
• Reflective approach to CPD