General practitioners Assessment of Continuing Education Programs in Golestan University of Medical Sciences

Considering the importance of continuing education programs for physician, so the most important duty of planners and office managers is holding and updating medical information, in this regards, this study aimed to assess continuing education programs from view points of general practitioners to modify the weaknesses and enhance the strengths of these programs in Golestan university of medical sciences.
This cross-sectional study has been done on general practitioners participating in the 5 Continuing medical education programs holding in second half of 2012 in Golestan university of medical scienses. sampling method was census and Instruments for doing this research was a questionnaire used by the office of continuing medical education in university. The questionnaire was composed of two parts: The first section consists of 10 questions on demographic characteristics, underlying the second part of the program implemented based on the Likert scale. questionnaires were distributed among all physicians participating in these programs and 333 questionnaires (an average of 60 questions per program) were completed. The results using of SPSS software based on descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were analyzed.
The average age of participants in this study was 40 ± 6.2 years, and their history of medical practices were 13±5.9.the rate of responding to the questionnaire was 83%. In this study, 62.7 % of the participants believed that corresponding of the content of programs to their business needs was high and very high . 91.3% of physicians declare the rate of success of programs in presenting new scientific material were moderate and more, while 62.3 consider active participation in discussion (questions and answering,discussion and implementation panel) was moderate to low.
More participants in CME programs declare their satisfaction of the contents of the programs regarding new scientific materials and corresponding with their job needs , it is suggested adult learning methods must be considered so that CME programs become more effective.