A continuing medical education program in chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases: design and outcome.

A continuing medical education course was developed to improve the care of patients with chronic bronchitis and emphysema (COPD); 44 primary care physicians completed the course. The physicians were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, with 3 of the 4 experimental groups assisting in the selection of topics for the programs and/or receiving feedback on tests given during the course. The course's impact was assessed using written tests to measure knowledge and simulated patient visits to observe physician performance. Experimental groups retained significantly greater amounts of information 9 months after completing the program and used more program material during patient visits than did the control group (p < 0.05). The test scores and patient visits of the 3 experimental groups involved in determining the audiovisual topics and/or receiving feedback were not significantly different from one another nor from the fourth experimental group.