Summary: Since several years the German College of General Practitioners and Family Physicians (DEGAM) criticizes the current state of continuing medical education (CME) in Germany: it is mostly knowledge based but not focusing on learners and the needs of daily practice. In 2009 the DEGAM worked out principles of family doctors´ CME in the sense of the British “revalidation” or the Canadian “recertification”: peer learning during visitations, in quality circles or by mentoring systems. At the DEGAM congress in Salzburg 2011 the College´s CME group conducted two workshops about visitations and recertification. As a first step the DEGAM is starting now a campaign for peer visitations of family practice teams guided by the Dutch “visitatie” campaign. Visitations of family practice peers serve to mutual learning and allow to pick up challenges for the own practice. One should distinguish between such visitations from hospitations in specialty clinics or from quality management normative assessment visits. By contrast the DEGAM campaign aims to peer visitations. The similarity of the settings allows to identify characteristics of the visited practice and comparison to the own one. The DEGAM campaign addresses not just doctors but the whole practice team as subject of peer visitations.Only DEGAM member practices receive the label „DEGAM-Hospitationspraxis“ by DEGAM´s federal office. There is a register of all German DEGAM visitation practices. Each practice declaring to agree with the DEGAM visitation principles will obtain the visitation label for use on the practice letterhead or homepage.The DEGAM starts this campaign hoping that good CME will not only be experienced as useful but also can offer fun and enjoyment.
Die DEGAM-Sektion Fortbildung ist inzwischen auf 232 Mitglieder angewachsen. Wie die DEGAM im Allgemeinen hat sich die Sektion auf dem Feld der...
Die DEGAM-Sektion Fortbildung ist inzwischen auf 232 Mitglieder angewachsen. Wie die DEGAM im Allgemeinen hat sich die Sektion auf dem Feld der...
Summary: Traditional methods of continuing medical education to change the behavior of doctors in the long term have sometimes limited impact. A promising and more active approach is practice shadowing, developed in 2012 by the German College of General Practitioners and Family Physicians (DEGAM). In this scheme, family physicians (FPs) and their teams visit each other in their practices and learn from each other as equals. All necessary documents, such as checklists or practice addresses, can be found on the DEGAM homepage. Preparatory courses, which are often used in peer review procedures, are not part of this program. The practice shadowinghas four phases: the decision to participate, a phase of preparation, the visit itself, and finally a phase of evaluation and implementation in both participating practices. Depending on their interests, the visiting teams can set their own priorities during the visit. The last of the four phases may continue for months, if participants decide to implement bigger changes after their visit. Practice shadowing is therefore a longer process than the actual day of the visit. In Norway, reciprocal practice visits are a long-standing part of medical education, for both vocational training and recertification. The DEGAM currently discusses various possibilities to help establish practice visits in the same way in Germany.
