Cost-effective continuing medical education: what surgeons really want from meetings

[...]we queried reasons for attending meetings, impediments to meeting attendance, and what a local or regional meeting could do to make it more appealing. There was a 48 per cent increased likelihood that physicians were making clinical choices based on evidence presented in the CME activity when tested by clinical vignette performance after participating in an online activity.2 Although these studies do appear to support the validity of online education, they are not specific to surgery and may not represent the requirements for hands-on learning that facilitates learning new surgical techniques.