CME in the Time of COVID-19: Educating Healthcare Professionals at the Point-of-care and Improving Performance Outcomes

Damaske, Janet; Walsh, Wendy; McKay, Jennifer

UpToDate® is a point-of-care clinical resource used by nearly 2 million clinicians worldwide. Users in the USA and other regions can obtain continuing education credits after researching clinical questions at the point-of-care. As part of the CME credit redemption process, participants provide feedback on the information researched during the UpToDate® learning activity. We examined the impact of UpToDate® searches on clinical decision-making related to COVID-19. Between January 1 and 31 August 2020, UpToDate® added more than 40 topic reviews on various aspects of COVID-19 diagnosis and management, and developed new methods for delivering COVID-19 content to our learners. During the observation period, participants accessed COVID-19-related topic reviews over 7.5 million times. Data collected from CME activity evaluations and user feedback suggested that the learning activity had a significant impact on clinical decision-making. Over 94% reported that they modified their management strategies as a result of using UpToDate®, and 97% reported that use of UpToDate® led to improvement in care. These findings support the benefit of self-directed, point-of-care learning activities on the clinical management of patients during a global pandemic.