Continued Education in the Health Sciences and
the Internet
It is a well-known truism that health professionals need to study during their entire professional lives, otherwise they are doomed as effective and respected clinicians. The pace of scientific and technical progress in the health sciences is astounding: the US National Library of Sciences is witnessing the doubling of its vaults of published knowledge every four or five years. If continued study and updating is neglected, a professional becomes obsolete in no more than one or two years.
The health care professional will need, then, to master the cognitive and operational tools to be an independent and effective "life-long learner". The capacity and skills to search for information and to select the best one, to read critically and to store and retrieve information when needed, are fundamental for the survival in a age characterized by excess of information.
Another significant trend in many countries is the mandatory periodical recertification of health professionals. The United States is, undoubtedly, a pioneer in this area. Brazil is in the verge of adopting such a system for physicians with a specialist certificate issued by the Brazilian Medical Association. This usually takes the form of the pluriannual accumulation of a given number of distance education credits, which then is accounted for the renewal of the specialist's certificate.
Now comes the Internet. It is obvious to anyone that Internet and distance comtinued education is a winner. Why? First of all because of the richness of information you can find on the Internet. Search mechanisms, bibliographical databases, journals, professional sites, university sites and sites which are specialized in providing educational experiences, abound in all areas of the health sciences. Secondly, because it eliminates the barriers of distance and time, thus making possible that study can happen anytime and anywhere. To use the words of a famous American medical educator, the Internet and continued education is a "marriage made in heaven". Thirdly, because technical advances, such as broadband Internet (high speeds connections to the home or office), video servers, video and teleconferencing, database technology, e-commerce, etc. will be leveraging profound changes in the educational world in the next years. It is impossible to remain out of this new, powerful wave. Insternet is the most revolutionary change for education since the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg, in 1462.
There are many more advantages for using the Internet and the Web as supports to distance continued education. Production is relatively simple. Content can be multimedia (text, sounds, static and dynamic images), Webforums, email, discussion lists and chatrooms can be used to interact at a distance with students. Even teachers can be anywhere and multi-institutional collaboration becomes possible.
All these advantages are leading to a veritable explosion in the number of distance continued education programs being offered all through the world. Virtual universities appear and grow like wild mushrooms after rain, and many well established educational institutions are investing heavily in the new wave.
A word of caution is in order, though. Distance education is not a synonim for good and reliable education. On the contrary: one must be aware that distance CME programs of good level are still rare. The majority of what is labeled as "education" in the Net is simply unsupervised content for browsing. Most courses remain incompletely developed, usurping the rights of the student to finish it. Full educational certification is lacking in many commercial sites. And, since we have mentioned it, a lot of "portals" in health care (the so-called "dot-com's") consider that distance education is a mere gimmick to attract and "glue" more visitors to their sites, instead of a long range commitment of stability, quality and assurance of delivery that good distance education is proud of.
As the old dictum says, "things are a-changing!". It is a fascinating
period of human history, and health care professionals should be aware
that mastering the use of high technology for our daily chores and preparation
for the future is, more than ever, essential.
Renato M.E. Sabbatini holds a doctorate in biomedical sciences by the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He was founder and director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics of the State University of Campinas, Brazil, and is currently an associate professor of medicine and chair of Medical Informatics at the Medical School in the same university. A pioneer in distance education in Latin America, Dr. Sabbatini also developed programs in telemedicine and electronic publishing in the health sciences.
Email: renato@sabbatini.com
Home page: http://renato.sabbatini.com/index_p.php