Here at QxMD, we are passionate about bringing medical education into the digital age. We build solutions that help practicing healthcare professionals provide evidence-based care, stay at the cutting edge of clinical research and gain new knowledge via digital CME.
In our continuous efforts to serve our users better, we conducted a survey of healthcare practitioners across the globe (drawn from the QxMD community) to find out just how they prefer to obtain their CME/CPD credits and where they’d like to see their experiences improve. There were more than 2500 respondents to our survey in May 2018.
On a scale of 1 (dread it) to 10 (enjoy it), the mean score was only 6.6 when healthcare practitioners were asked how they felt about participating in CME for the year. If one were to approach this using the net promoter score calculation, CME/CPD as an industry would score -21. Not a resounding vote of enthusiasm, suggesting there is significant opportunity for improvement.
The results indicate that the options that are available today leaves much to be desired. We’ll show you why healthcare professionals are unsatisfied and what we can learn from these results to deliver a better solution to these clinicians.
Exploring where healthcare providers focus their efforts to complete CME credits
We learnt that 67% of respondents preferred to attend live conferences as a method of obtaining continuing education credits, while some even admitted that it was a great excuse to get out of the hospital!
However, the most common driver of live conference attendance was the quality of topics covered. It was closely followed by the speakers and the conference’s proximity to where they lived and worked.
This indicates strongly that even though people are busy, they are going out of their way to attend these live conferences as they see real value in these events that they can’t get elsewhere. This suggests that if we identify learner needs and implement changes to satisfy these needs, we can drive more engagement and satisfaction with all forms of CME, including digital/online CME.
Where can we improve the online CME process?
When we looked at where and when healthcare practitioners are completing CME, we learnt that 84% of healthcare practitioners complete CME credits during their personal time, with 46% making use of breaks or downtime at work.
It’s clear that mobility and content brevity are paramount to these busy healthcare professionals.
We also investigated what specific areas healthcare professionals find challenging when working on their CME credits.
When asked what they found cumbersome about doing CME, the top complaints included:
- Manual submission of CME credits to regulatory body (38%)
- Difficulty finding high quality courses that are interesting and professionally relevant (36%)
- Poorly designed or limiting course platforms (35%)
- Content that is too long (34%)
Online CME content that drives engagement
While we know that healthcare practitioners have a desire to earn CME credits online, the question remains: What are healthcare practitioners looking for in an online CME platform?
Our survey findings show us a handful of elements that are crucial for healthcare practitioners when selecting their ideal online CME/CPD platform.
Here are our top three learnings from our global survey:
- 54% of healthcare practitioners are seeking accessibility on multiple devices (desktop, tablet, mobile etc.) when selecting an online platform.
- 53% of healthcare practitioners are looking for high quality educational content.
- 47% of healthcare practitioners prefer online education that presents quality content in a way that’s in-depth but not too long or time consuming. (For instance, a 15 minute video or 15 minute read that can be consumed within a typical lunch break.)
It’s also absolutely clear that the submission of CME credits is a major pain point for most healthcare practitioners and it would be game-changing if a platform could automate this process.
By checking all three of these boxes, online CME/CPD platforms can better meet learner needs by improving accessibility, quality and delivery of content in a digestible format.
At QxMD, we’re constantly looking to improve the online CME experience. To do this, we’ve created a quick checklist to follow when striving to build better online CME resources:
- Accessible on multiple devices, including smartphones & tablets
- Different ways to consume content; audio, video and traditional text formats for different learner preferences
- Digestible content to fit busy lifestyles
- Facilitate the submissions of CME credits to the regulatory bodies (email reminders are helpful, automation is even better!)
- Recommended CME courses based on professional relevance
Final thoughts
When it comes to delivering the highest quality CME courses, it’s important to first understand the needs of healthcare practitioners.
Within this global survey, we were able to lean on our users to discover how we can better deliver the CME courses in a digital format.
What are some other ways that you feel could improve the online CME experience? Tell us about how your favourite CME platforms are killing it!
And if you found these survey results helpful, show us some love by sharing with your network.
Learn by QxMD is a mobile-first eCME platform that enables healthcare providers to earn CME /CPD credits in less than 15 minutes per day!
