This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Medical Practice  • Conflict of Interest  • Medical Education  • Medical Ethics  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Relman¹ has assembled a litany of unsupported and inaccurate assertions, much of which have been gathered from newspapers. I believe that education that changes behavior or confirms good behavior is a positive outcome. Relman expresses dismay that "CME does in fact change the prescribing behavior of the physicians who attend." He thus implies that institutional education the only permissible source of behavioral change.

The ACCME, however, provides some additional data about the CME enterprise. While the Wall Street Journal article cited by Relman claims that more than 60% of total support for CME came from the pharmaceutical industry, the ACCME reports² that 38.6% of the revenue of the CME enterprise was "Commercial Support Income Received From Firms That Manufacture Products Regulated by FDA."Of all CME hours available to physicians, accredited publishing, education, and communication companies provide a mere 7%. Less than 10% of physician interface with . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Jack E. Angel
Coalition for Healthcare Communication
Greenwich, Conn

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Industry Sponsorship of Continuing Medical Education
Kurt J. Boyce, Jacqueline Parochka, and Karen Overstreet
JAMA. 2003;290(9):1149.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Industry Sponsorship of Continuing Medical Education
Joel E. Cleary
JAMA. 2003;290(9):1150.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Industry Sponsorship of Continuing Medical Education—Reply
Arnold S. Relman
JAMA. 2003;290(9):1150.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Defending Professional Independence: ACCME's Proposed New Guidelines for Commercial Support of CME
Arnold S. Relman
JAMA. 2003;289(18):2418-2420.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Educational governance for the regulation of industry sponsored continuing medical education in interventional and device based therapies
Morgan et al.
Heart 2005;91:710-712.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT