- There are currently 25,000 medical journals in the world alone.
- To consult all this content, a doctor would need to spend 19 hours a day, 365 days a year.
- Medical updating is not only useful for personal development but also to guarantee quality service to patients.
Medical updating is a requirement that all health professionals must meet. They must permanently take courses, workshops and seminars to learn about the most recent advances in their field. The objective is not only to promote personal development but also to guarantee a quality service for patients.
In this sense, specialists must be certified from time to time before the National Regulatory Committee of Councils of Medical Specialties (CONACEM) to be part of their respective community. Although one of the biggest problems is that all studies are quite expensive.
The time needed to read all scientific journals
On the other hand, it is not the only barrier because time is also a factor that does not always work in favor of medical update. In accordance with Andrew Galofrefounder of the platform for the community called DocredGiven the amount of scientific information that is generated daily, a doctor would need 19 hours a day, 365 days a year, to be able to read everything that is published in scientific advances, since Currently there are about 25 thousand medical journals.
He added that the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic raised a very important need that was stop the spread of false information (fake news), while strengthening contact between the medical community.
“This is why Docred came about, to satisfy the need of health professionals to update themselves efficiently.”
He added that it is a digital community that has scientific support and that allows free interaction, participation and communication between doctors, both general and specialist in Latin America.
How do doctors prefer to update themselves?
One out of every two doctors (48%) reads between one and four articles a week, while, according to a survey in Spain, 88% would be interested in having a free online service. Additionally, 70% of doctors use Google and Yahoo (they only review about 18% of all the information available on the internet) and only 29% access databases. While 80% find it more useful to read articles in Spanish than in English.
Recently Docred and the Mexican Hospital Consortium (CMH), signed a collaboration agreement. This provides an efficient, safe and user-friendly environment for continuing education processes, medical update and an internal social network for the more than 15 thousand doctors of the CMH.
The digital community is a dynamic solution in which the doctor can access and find information relevant to his medical practice, update courses, clinical practice guidelines, as well as connect with opinion leaders or peers with the purpose of empower doctors within a digital environment designed for them.
Also read:
Physicians spend between 800 and 1,500 hours a year updating
Docred, new social network and exclusive platform for doctors
MedForum, the new digital platform for medical updates