Bregger Melissa D, O'Brien Celia Laird, Brown Oluwateniola E, Suleiman Linda, Corey Sheryl A, Schroedl Clara J
Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA.
Med Educ Online. 2025 Dec;30(1):2525170. doi: 10.1080/10872981.2025.2525170. Epub 2025 Jul 4.
Recommendations to ensure diverse, equitable, and inclusive content in Continuing Medical Education (CME) have been developed, however, learners' perception of these efforts are unknown. Learner recognition of biased or non-inclusive content and satisfaction with activity diversity provides insight into the success of bias mitigation efforts during CME planning and delivery. This study's objective was to evaluate the types of bias identified by learners, and to evaluate learners' perception of inclusivity and satisfaction with the diversity of CME activities.
This study was a retrospective mixed methods analysis of post-activity evaluation comments from 210 CME activities and 5,284 evaluations at a large Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)-accredited academic healthcare system from September 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023.
Learners were satisfied with speaker and content diversity in 98.9% of activities. The qualitative analysis included 967 comments and demonstrated four main categories of perceived bias or lack of diversity identified by the CME activity learners: 1) Bias related to social identity factors, of which racial, ethnic, and gender bias were the most common forms identified by learners; 2) Lack of diversity in speakers, content and delivery; 3) Resistance to bias and inclusion evaluation questions; and 4) Commercial/industry bias. Further, some learners noted the instructional design of certain activities was not inclusive of all learners.
These findings suggest that some CME activity learners perceive various forms of bias and lack of inclusivity and diversity despite efforts to review and mitigate bias in the planning and delivery of CME. While most CME activity learners were satisfied with speaker and content diversity, the data can inform more targeted efforts during the CME planning phase that focus on speaker and content diversity and screening for bias that goes beyond traditional industry/commercial bias.
已制定了确保继续医学教育（CME）内容多样化、公平和包容的建议，然而，学习者对这些努力的看法尚不清楚。学习者对有偏见或不具包容性的内容的认知以及对活动多样性的满意度，为了解CME规划和实施过程中减轻偏见努力的成功程度提供了线索。本研究的目的是评估学习者识别出的偏见类型，并评估学习者对CME活动包容性的认知以及对其多样性的满意度。
本研究是对2022年9月1日至2023年12月31日期间，在一个大型经继续医学教育认证委员会（ACCME）认证的学术医疗系统中，210项CME活动的活动后评估评论和5284份评估进行的回顾性混合方法分析。
98.9%的活动中，学习者对演讲者和内容的多样性感到满意。定性分析包括967条评论，显示了CME活动学习者识别出的四类主要的感知偏见或缺乏多样性的情况：1）与社会身份因素相关的偏见，其中种族、民族和性别偏见是学习者识别出的最常见形式；2）演讲者、内容和授课方式缺乏多样性；3）对偏见和包容性评估问题的抵触；4）商业/行业偏见。此外，一些学习者指出某些活动的教学设计没有涵盖所有学习者。
这些发现表明，尽管在CME的规划和实施过程中努力审查和减轻偏见，但一些CME活动学习者仍察觉到各种形式的偏见以及缺乏包容性和多样性。虽然大多数CME活动学习者对演讲者和内容的多样性感到满意，但这些数据可为CME规划阶段更有针对性的努力提供参考，这些努力应关注演讲者和内容的多样性，并筛查超越传统行业/商业偏见的其他偏见。
