N. Fabris, D. Colacicco

C.I.R.M. Consorzio Italiano per la Ricerca in Medicina
Ist. Villa Marelli – AO Niguarda, Milano (Italy)

The necessity of the continuing education for the health professionals, today, is not any more an individual problem, but a requirement of the collectivity. In the health field, however, the topic of the CME – continuing medical education -, born in Italy with a law of 2002, has been considered in these years as a negative aspect for the professional activity if not even a punishing action for those, who daily must face the uneasy problems of the patients. The anxiety generated from the obligation to catch up the required credits, has replaced completely the interest to keep oneself constantly trained on the technical-scientific developments connected with the best practices of medicine. The numerosity of the events necessary to satisfy the demand of courses - from 2002 today 300,000 are the events carried out - and the diversification of the organizers or "Provider" - 84 till today - has prompted the Italian Ministry Health to lunch an experimentation in order to define the requirements that the courses organizers must have in order to offer either residential or on-line products, this last one been that one with the use of new media such as the "e-learning" courses.