THURSDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Primary care physicians who need to update their skill at managing chronic, non-cancer pain may benefit as much from an Internet-based continuing medical education (CME) program as from attending lectures delivered by national experts, according to research presented recently at the 23rd annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine in New Orleans.
Thomas E. Elliott, M.D., of the Duluth Clinic and the University of Minnesota Medical School in Duluth, Minn., and colleagues randomly assigned 136 primary care physicians who were attending a two-day CME meeting to one of three groups. The first group received laptop computers and watched a four-hour pain management course developed by national experts. The second group attended a four-hour pain management course delivered by national experts. The third control group attended four hours of lectures on palliative care.
Immediately before and after the intervention -- and again three months later -- all of the physicians took a clinically validated survey to assess their pain management competence. The researchers found that scores significantly improved in the pain-management Internet and lecture groups (from 143.6 to 150.4 and from 138 to 150.6, respectively). They also found that scores were only insignificantly improved in the control group.
"Although both CME methods were effective in improving educational outcomes, Internet-based CME may be much more efficient and less costly," the authors conclude.
Abstract
