The Essential Role of Educator Development

Reinvigorating Continuing Medical Education: Meeting the Challenges of the Digital Age

Clinicians in today's health care environment face an overwhelming quantity of knowledge that requires continued education and lifelong learning. However, traditional continuing medical education (CME) courses cannot meet these educational needs, particularly given the proliferation of knowledge and increasing demands on clinicians' time and resources. CME courses that previously offered only in-person, face-to-face education must evolve in a learner-centric manner founded on principles of adult learning theory to remain relevant in the current era. In this article, we describe the transition of the Mayo Clinic Cardiovascular Review for Cardiology Boards and Recertification (CVBR) from a traditional course with only live content to a course integrating live, online, and enduring materials. This evolution has required leveraging technology to maximize learner engagement, offering faculty development to ensure content alignment with learner needs, and strong leadership dedicated to providing learners an unparalleled educational experience. Despite stagnation in growth of the traditional live course, these changes have increased the overall reach of the Mayo Clinic CVBR. Learners engaging with digital content have demonstrated larger increases in knowledge with less educational time commitment. Courses seeking to implement similar changes must develop formal learning objectives focused on learner needs, build an online presence that includes an assessment of learner knowledge, enlist a cohort of dedicated faculty who teach based on principles of adult learning theory, and perpetually refresh educational content based on learner feedback and performance. Following these principles will allow traditional CME courses to thrive despite learners' resource constraints and alternative means to access information.

Editor-in-Chief's Top Picks From 2016: Part Two

Each week, I record audio summaries for every article in JACC, as well as an issue summary. While this process has been incredibly time-consuming, I have become quite familiar with every paper that we publish. Thus, I personally select papers (both original investigations and review articles) from 15 distinct specialties each year for your review. In addition to my personal choices, I have included manuscripts that have been the most accessed or downloaded on our websites, as well as those selected by the JACC Editorial Board members. In order to present the full breadth of this important research in a consumable fashion, we will present these manuscripts in this issue of JACC. Part One included the sections: Basic & Translational Research, Cardiac Failure, Cardiomyopathies/Myocardial & Pericardial Diseases, Congenital Heart Disease, Coronary Disease & Interventions, and CVD Prevention & Health Promotion. Part Two includes the sections: CV Medicine & Society, Hypertension, Imaging, Metabolic & Lipid Disorders, Rhythm Disorders, Valvular Heart Disease, and Vascular Medicine (1-84).