Background: Continuing education is an effective learning method, and continuing education of the medical community is a key element in increasing the knowledge, skills, quality and effectiveness of the healthcare system and promoting professional competence. The learning resources at each level of education are reduced and forgotten over time. As technology progresses, a new volume of information is also added to different sciences each day. Therefore, given the challenges faced by participants in attendance education, non-attendance education is unavoidable. Regarding the importance of re-education of medical community groups and the importance of non-attendance courses, the aim of this study was to review the three-year non-attendance re-education program presented by the Medical Re-Education Council of Mashhad (2014-2016).
Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on non-attendance re-education programs presented by Mashhad Medical Council during 2014-2016. The collected data included the proposed programs, year of holding, target groups and participants. In this study, the number of participants in each program was reviewed in different years. The current study data were analyzed in Excel 2013 software.
Results: Most of the re-education programs developed and presented in 2016 were six non-attendance re-education programs, and the lowest of these programs were two non-attendance re-education programs in 2014. A total of 13218 people participated in non-attendance re-education programs during the years 2014-2016. The highest number of participants was in 2016 (9247 people) and the lowest was in 2014 (194 people). Most participants in non-attendance re-education programs were in general medical education (34.5%), pharmacy (25.8%) and general dentistry (21%), and fewer participants were in radiotherapy (0.04%), endocrine glands and metabolism (0.04%), emergency medicine (0.05%) and nuclear medicine (0.07%). Applicants of re-education programs participated mostly in biotechnology programs (45.4%), biological products (40.3%), and familiarity with diabetes and treatment (8.5%).
Conclusions: Organizational support in order to increase access to information and communication is a necessity—continuous education is one of such factors. Other topics such as health management, drug interactions and their side effects, ethics and addiction should be included in re-education programs. In addition to conventional methods, the use of new technologies and social media is essential in order to improve re-education methods—such as e-learning and the use of smart devices.