The number of participants of post-graduate medical programs increases significantly in later years. There are manyfold challenges in this context, which need to be addressed in order to provide best-practice and up-to-date CME programs in the future: (1.) digitalization, (2.) globalization of knowledge, (3.) relevance for the society and professional development, and (4.) prividing high quality, innovative teaching and learning opportunities.

Providers of CME programs must face these challenges to survive in the global competition and to attract candidates to join these programs. One way of addressing those challenges is to focus on the post-graduate program participants’ needs and interests, as in the field of marketing with the strategy and concept of ‘customer centricity’. This concept which normally embraces a company’s strategy, structures and processes, and generates knowledge about its customers and the company’s` culture, - is recently also used as a method for modelling continued educational offers at a university level.

This PhD project will help us to develop a differentiated understanding of attractiveness of CME programs, including usefulness, accountability, practicality, return on investment, acceptability, etc.. Research on the structure, content and orientation of such programs is rare. This project sets out to fill this gap. The application of a new and efficient approach, gives structure to the research and supports a change of perspective, which is promising.

IML: Melanie de la Rosa (PhD Candidate)
Prof. Dr. phil. Sissel Guttormsen (PhD Thesis advisor)
Dr. phil. Felix Schmitz (Project partner)

Co-Referee: Prof. Ara Tekian, PhD, MHPE, University of Illinois, Chicago (USA)