JMA's fundamental CME policy is to promote consistent continuing education throughout a physician's career.Although social expections of the physician changes with the times, the immutable expectations are that they possessspecialized knowledge, technical skills, and volition for self-study and self-evaluation, abide by a code of professionalethics, and possess acute intelligence and a rich humanity. The last trait is a foremost asset for physicians in buildingphysician-patient relationships.

Objective: The Hyogo Hospital Pharmaceutical Society has been conducting an original pharmacy postgraduate education program, “lifelong learning program (to nurture pharmacy specialists)”, since 2002 using the Internet.  To understand the status of using this program, this study employed a questionnaire survey involving all registered members.
Methods: Subjects were all members (1,870) of the society.  Questionnaires were distributed and collected by mail.
Results: Only 20.1% of the members had experience of using the program, and the frequency of using it was less than once per 6-12 months in 60% of the members.  Their level of awareness concerning the acquisition of credits for lifelong learning was 36.9%.  The program category they wished to take was an infection-related program in 26.1% of the members, which was the highest.
Conclusion: As reasons for only a small number of members using the program, the following are considered: loss of user’s ID and password required to login, and lack of awareness concerning the acquisition of credits for lifelong learning offered by the Japanese Society of Hospital Pharmacists.  As future issues, we must encourage members to obtain a new password and be proactively involved in preparing new program categories that the members wish to take, in order to promote the continuous use of the program.

The committee of continuing medical education in Japan Society for Medical Education discussed on PRA of American Medical Association [AMA]. We have first analyzed the brochure of PRA for the members of AMA, and then prepared the questionnaire for AMA. We were able to obtained the answers to the questionnaire which were sent to AMA through courtesy of Japanese Medical Association (JMA). It was realized that AMA emphasizes an importance of PRA for medical practice to the patients; nevertheless acquisition rate of PRA is actually low, and so AMA proceeds with efforts towards completion of PRA.

The aim of this study is to clarify the present situation of activities of continuing medical education (CME) for the primary care physicians to whom the leading hospitals, such as universities and clinical trainee hospitals perform CME in their regions. A questionaire was designed for main 4 parts, as following: 1) On the purpose of CME for the physicians. 2) On the organization (office) managing CME in the hospitals. 3) On the strategies of CME. 4) On the evaluation of CME. Answers to a questionaire were replied from 234 institutions (58.1%). Analyzing the results, we recognized that the leading hospitals actively carried out CME for the primary care physicians in the community. Furthermore, conversion to experiential learning from passive learning and establishment of evaluation methods should be promoted in CME.

Because new media have come onstage in the information technology period, also self-learning methods have been diversified. Recently, small group discussion such as clinical conference using the mailing list is lively performed among the primary care physicians, and it is considered to be useful for continuing medical education. To promote the mailing list for continuing medical education, we present as follows; 1) present situation: to show a good example of TFC-ML (total family care-mailing list), 2) usefulness: to know new medical knowledge, new medical information and literatures etc., to discuss clinical cases. 3) issues: a role of moderator, excess of information, correspondence with slander, 4) future: to reevaluate usefulness for continuing medical education. We would like to expect effectiveness of mailing list for continuing medical education.