Wonca Offers New International Certificate in CME/CPD in Family Medicine

The Wonca International Certificate in Continuing Medical Education (CME) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in Family Medicine (WIDFM) has just been launched. Detailed information is available on Global Family Doctor - Wonca Online (see www.globalfamilydoctor.com/widfm/index.htm ). This Wonca CME and CPD Program in Family Medicine has been long awaited, particularly by those countries that have few educational resources.

The Program requires participants to complete six out of eight topic based programs within three years. Initial topics are: Women's Health, Stroke, Diabetes Type 2, Palliative Care, Dermatology, Common Cardiological problems and Hypertension and Heart Failure. One program, the Virtual Consulting Room (VCR), is compulsory. The VCR provides a two-way approach to global medical education. Participating doctors are free to submit their own cases to this compulsory unit, with a view to providing education on topics, that may not be explored well in 'Western medicine', such as malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The Program Director is Emeritus Professor Neil Carson. Successful candidates will be awarded a Wonca Certificate and a Wonca 'pin'.

While costs have been kept as low as possible to ensure maximum participation, a three tier approach to payment, based on national per capita GDP has been applied. There is a list of all countries and their categories, on the Wonca website (see above).
Additionally, Wonca have commenced a Scholarship program to provide free scholarships to those most in need and organizations and individuals are welcome to provide scholarships for which they can select criteria and have naming rights. All scholarships will be listed on Wonca Online and will be allocated by a committee set up for that purpose.

The program is CD based. The CD based program includes multimedia elements such as video and animation which cannot be utilized on the internet, and some countries have poor internet access. Programs include a pre test, minimum ten case presentations on a given topic, and a post test and evaluation survey. In addition, each topic comes with a suite of related resources, such as videos of procedures, further reading, patient education materials.

Professional (adult) learning techniques have been used and all topics have been 'internationalized' to ensure maximum relevance. The language in the Program is for those who have English as a first or second language. The navigation of CDs has been kept intuitive for those with little computer knowledge. Our premise is that every doctor in the world should have access to the highest quality continuing medical education. Wonca is happy to assist doctors to equip themselves to take advantage of the program.

It is also recognized that those most in need of continuing education may not have the equipment to play the CDs. We are therefore seeking assistance in purchasing computers for developing nations doctors and suggest that such nations may be interested in setting up 'lending libraries' of laptops to enable doctors to make better use of the program.