Status of postgraduate training and continuing medical education of family physicians in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

The study aimed to find out the status of postgraduate training and continuing medical education [CME] of family physicians of Pakistan. It was a 10 months postal survey between November 2009 and September 2010. Postal questionnaires were sent to randomly selected 1200 family physicians. The data was analyzed using SPSS v-17. The response rate of survey was 24%. The number of family physicians receiving any kind of post graduate training was 104 [36%] while 184 [64%] had no postgraduate training at all. Medicine was the most common subject in postgraduate training [N=19, 18% of 104]. The number of family physicians holding any degree was 87 [30%]. Mean weekly time spent on self education was 6.5 hours with a range of 1 to 10 hours. Most of family physicians are practicing without training and mostly update their knowledge from books and use of online CME is low