Original articles   

International Angiology 2007 December;26(4):361-66

Copyright © 2007 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

European continuing medical education in vascular surgery: 5-year results of congresses approved by the Union Européenne des Médecins Spécialistes Section of Vascular Surgery

Liapis C. D. ¹, Bellos J. K. ², Bergqvist D. ³, Van Bockel J. H. ⁴, Palombo D. ⁵, Wolfe J. H. N. ⁶, on behalf of European Section and Board of Vascular Surgery (EBVS) of the Union Européenne des Médecins Spécialistes (UEMS)

¹ Department of Vascular Surgery, Athens University Medical School, Athens, Greece; ² 2nd Department of Propedeutic Surgery, Athens University Medical School, Laiko General Hospital, Athens, Greece; ³ Department of Surgery, Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden; ⁴ Department of Vascular Surgery, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands; ⁵ Vascular Surgery Unit, San Martino University Hospital, Genoa, Italy; ⁶ Vascular Surgery Unit, St. Mary’s Hospital, London, UK

Aim. Continuing medical education (CME) can be defined as “educational activities that serve to maintain, develop, or increase the knowledge, skills and professional performance of a physician to provide services for patients, the public, or the profession”. CME is a major professional responsibility. The European Board of Vascular Surgery of the Union Européenne des Médecins Spécialistes (UEMS) Section of Vascular Surgery has, through its European Vascular CME (EVCME) Committee, accredited 74 congresses during the 5-year period from 2000-2004.
Methods. Official evaluation forms were completed by the congress participants for a personal appraisal of the quality of the activities. ∆he data in this manuscript focused on questions that were the most relevant and of the greatest interest to the participants. A statistical analysis of the results was performed utilizing ANOVA and Robust tests of equality of means as well as a posthoc analysis for further investigation, and non parametric Wilcoxon signed ranks test.
Results. The educational needs of participants regarding new diagnostic and therapeutic modes were stated as “important” and “extremely important” in the responses at over 80% in total. Over 75% of the participants answered “extremely important” and “important” to the question “how important is evidence-based practice to your practice”.
Conclusion. This survey indicates that the EVCME approved congresses had a positive impact for the vascular surgeon by updating overall knowledge on vascular surgery; the majority of comments by the participants also indicates that EVCME is fulfilling its aim to bring as much evidence-based practice as possible into the daily work schedule of the surgeon by turning knowledge acquired by CME into performance of the participants.