MISSION STATEMENT
The purpose of Primary Care Education Consortium (PCEC) is to create, develop and implement practical, evidence-based educational interventions for the primary care community on optimal disease management strategies that will enhance patient health outcomes and improvement healthcare teamwork. All PCEC activities are focused on maintaining, developing, or increasing knowledge, skills, and professional performance and relationships that a health professional uses to provide services for patients, the public, or the profession. PCEC was designed by primary care, with input from primary care, for primary care.
Content Areas
Content for all activities is designed to address the educational and practice gaps identified in the needs assessment. Content is typically in the form of reviews and/or updates to clinical medicine on the therapeutic areas most commonly treated by primary care clinicians. All content includes evidence-based clinical recommendations as well as desirable attributes, which are usually noted in an activity's learning objectives. The intent of the learning objectives and content is to close the gaps identified in the needs assessment by improving knowledge, competence and/or performance. All activities developed by PCEC adhere to ACCME's definition of appropriate CME content: knowledge and skills generally recognized and accepted by the profession as within the basic medical sciences, the discipline of clinical medicine, and the provision of health care to the public.
Target Audience
PCEC provides educational activities for a national audience of healthcare professionals, including family physicians, internal medicine physicians, osteopathic physicians, and general practitioners. PCEC also recognizes that other, allied medical professionals are also involved in the multidisciplinary management of patients that is often provided in the primary care setting and, as such, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and registered pharmacists are also part of the core target audience.
Types of Activities
PCEC provides a range of activities that include live symposia, live virtual presentations, Internet-based enduring materials, print CME and journal-based CME in peer-reviewed and indexed journals. The activity format is determined based on the type of educational gap revealed in the needs assessment (i.e. knowledge, competence and/or performance gap) and all activities include adult learning principles.
Expected Results
PCEC expects that each CME activity we certify will enable the learner to achieve the learning objectives developed from the needs assessment, thereby closing the identified gaps. As a result, we expect that our learners will increase their knowledge, competence, and/or performance in practice, thereby resulting in improved patient health outcomes and better performance of the healthcare team. PCEC uses the Moore, Green, and Gallis outcomes model as a framework for its outcomes measurement activities and measures levels 1-5 clinician competence in all activities. As activity content is generally focused on addressing identified gaps and improving physician competence, level 5 (change in physician performance) activity outcomes are often measured. Outcomes measurement activities are typically in the form of evaluations; pre- and post-tests; surveys; patient case vignettes and commitment to change (CTC) surveys.