Purpose
The purpose of Primary Care Education Consortium (PCEC) is to create, develop
and implement practical, evidence-based educational interventions to the primary
care community on optimal disease management strategies to enhance patient care
outcomes. All PCEC developed CME activities adhere to ACCME’s definition of
CME: to maintain, develop, or increase the knowledge, skills, and professional performance
and relationships that a physician uses to provide services for patients, the public,
or the profession. Several primary care associations collaborate with the Consortium
in an effort to provide CME activities to physicians.
Content Areas
Content for all activities is designed to address the educational gaps identified
in the needs assessment. Content is typically in the form of reviews and/or updates
to clinical medicine on the therapeutic areas most commonly treated by primary care
physicians. All content includes evidence-based clinical recommendations as well
as desirable physician attributes, which are usually noted in an activity’s
learning objectives. The intent of the learning objectives and content is to improve
physicians’ knowledge, competence and/or performance as defined in the needs
assessment. All PCEC developed content adheres to ACCME’s definition of appropriate
CME content: knowledge and skills generally recognized and accepted by the profession
as within the basic medical sciences, the discipline of clinical medicine, and the
provision of health care to the public.
Target Audience
PCEC provides educational activities for a national audience of primary care physicians
with clinical responsibilities, including family physicians, internal medicine physicians,
osteopathic physicians and general practitioners. PCEC also recognizes that other
allied medical professionals are also involved in providing treatment to patients
in the primary care setting and as such, nurse practitioners, physician assistants
and registered pharmacists constitute a secondary audience.
Types of Activities
PCEC provides a range of activities that include: live symposia, Internet-based
enduring materials, consensus roundtable publications, print CME and journal-based
CME in peer-reviewed and indexed journals. The activity format is determined based
on the type of educational gap revealed in the needs assessment (i.e. knowledge,
competence and/or performance gap) and all activities include adult learning principles.
Expected Results
As a result of participating in a PCEC developed CME activity, we expect our physician
learners to improve their knowledge, competence and/or performance in practice that
lead to improvement in patient outcomes. PCEC strives for Moore levels three and
four outcomes measurement, which measures change in physician learning (level three)
and performance (level four) and consistently measures for improvements in knowledge
and competence as a result of participating in the activity. Outcomes measurement
activities are typically in the form of evaluations; pre and post tests; surveys;
patient case vignettes and commitment to change (CTC) surveys. PCEC continues to
research ways it may begin measuring level five (patient health) and level six (population
health) outcomes in relation to its CME activities.