CMOD - FAQs
The Hong Kong Practitioner VOLUME 25 / November 2003
CMOD - FAQs


Since the advent of this CMOD System, we have been receiving questions from our fellow members every now and then concerning topics that might be of interest not only to the inquirer himself/herself but also to many of us. In this issue of HK Pract, we publish two questions relating to CPD & CME and the responses for your information.

CHAN Hung Chiu
Co-ordinator, CMOD
The Hong Kong College of Family Physicians



Question 1

What is CPD and what are the ways of obtaining CPD?
 
Answer 1

CPD is Continuous Professional Development. It is defined as the process of lifelong uninterrupted learning and self-improvement for individuals and groups, which enable medical professionals to expand and fulfill their potential in maintaining a high medical standard and an ever-improving quality of care that meets the need of patients.

  • CPD in the primary care involves cycles of assessment planning learning evaluation. The learning should be learner-focused, of high medical standard, relevant to general practice and educationally effective.

The main CPD activities include clinical audits, learning plans in the form of CPD logs, supervised clinical attachments organized by the College and small learning groups with assessments and reviews. Other activities include writing articles for publication in journals and doing critical appraisals on journal articles. CPR courses and those activities that require interactive teaching of family medicine and post-course professional examinations / assessments are also included as CPD activities.

 
Question 2
How does our College accreditate CME points to educational activities? With the same function why do other organizers accredit higher points?
 
Answer 2

Our College's CME points are Quality-based and they are calculated by QA factor x duration of the educational activity. They are sometimes lower then those time-based CME points. The QA factors are determined by

  • Content of the educational activity demonstrating high ethical and clinical standards in line with evidence-based medicine.
  • Importance and relevance to general / family practice in terms of improving quality of patient-care.
  • Clear learning objective and practicability of implementing the objective in daily general / family practice.
  • Functions organized directly by the College and its subcommittee.