A pathway to keep all lifelong learners up to date: the ERS continuing professional development programme

[摘要] Albert Einstein’s philosophy on lifelong learning was that intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. Yet in reality, across the board, the foundations of our education systems encourage individual learners early in life to choose a particular path or specialty in a structured way, and then provide little guidance for ongoing development at a more mature stage of their careers. Accordingly, considerable efforts have been invested in identifying relevant content (syllabus) and defining in detail how knowledge and skills are expected to be transferred (curriculum), including: learning objectives, lessons, assignments and learning materials, as well as assessments and other methods, to evaluate learning for the training period up to specialisation in a certain discipline. Whilst lifelong learning for health professionals could be deemed a given to some, for a large number of respiratory specialists worldwide, there is no guidance on how to keep their knowledge, skills and attitudes up to date after their specialist training. This point is increasingly relevant considering that health professionals are not only finding themselves in the situation of a constant balancing act between integrating a rapidly growing amount of changing information and making decisions; furthermore, with an ageing population, professionals can be active in clinical practice for up to 40 years after concluding specialist training. There is evidence that physicians reach the apex of their knowledge shortly after passing their speciality board exams, which is then followed by a decline in their overall knowledge base [1]. In addition, it was found that the frequency of adverse licensing actions intensifies proportionally to the time spent in practice [1, 2]. Thus, continuous professional development is a major need in the effort to alleviate suffering from disease and to provide the most efficient and scientifically sound healthcare to the world’s population.

[学科分类] 呼吸医学