Education Is the Foundation of Better Care

Why the future of CME and CE is bright: adult learning, lifelong growth, and reflective practice

Scott Hershman, MD, FACEHP, CHCP | Vice President of Education and Professional Development, California Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP) and Advisor to Vinea

Physicians have not always loved continuing education, and the requirements can feel like paperwork. But step back, and the picture is genuinely hopeful. Education remains the foundation on which better patient outcomes are built, and the future of CME and CE is being shaped by how physicians actually learn: through experience, through reflection, and through a lifelong commitment to the next patient who needs us.

Q: Physicians have long found CME’s requirements demanding. Why are you optimistic about the future of continuing education?

I am optimistic because the frustrations, real as they are, are being addressed, and because they were never the heart of the matter.

Yes, requirements have been spread across state and specialty boards, and reporting has been cumbersome for physicians who practice in more than one state. The federal layer adds to it, such as the one-time training on substance use disorders that DEA-registered prescribers complete. But this is a shared challenge, and the profession is solving it together. In 2024, the AMA advanced a common CME reporting standard across boards, and boards, specialty societies, and physicians are increasingly aligned on simplifying the path. The aim is to streamline the CME process and adopt standardized reporting so that physicians can focus on what matters most.

Underneath the logistics, something more important is happening. The field is shifting from counting hours toward learning that changes practice. Education has always been the foundation for better patient outcomes, and we are finally building continuing education around how physicians truly learn. That is the reason for optimism.

Q: You put adult learning at the center. What does the science of how physicians learn tell us?

A: In my work leading education and professional development for California’s family physicians, I keep coming back to what decades of adult-learning research tell us. Malcolm Knowles’ work on andragogy holds that adults learn best when the learning is self-directed, draws on their own experience, is problem-centered and immediately relevant, and is driven by internal motivation.

Physicians are the very model of the self-directed adult learner. The best continuing education meets them there, treating them as active partners rather than passive recipients. When we design for how physicians actually learn, engagement and the real-world impact follows.

Q: Reflective practice runs through your thinking. What does it look like day to day?

A: At its heart it is a simple, powerful habit. After a visit, a physician asks: what can I learn from the patient I just saw, and how do I make the experience and the outcome better for the next patient and their family? That one question turns everyday clinical work into continuous learning. Some of that reflection happens in the moment, as we think on our feet while care unfolds, and some happens afterward, when we look back and learn from what we did.

Experience only becomes durable learning when we pause to reflect on it. For a clinician who carries responsibility for patients and their families over time, reflection is not extra work. It is how good care compounds, visit after visit.

Q: How does that connect to lifelong learning and to patient outcomes?

A: Lifelong learning is really a professional identity: the commitment to keep growing across an entire career. Reflection is the engine that makes it real, because each patient becomes a teacher for the next. Over time, small reflective gains compound into better communication, better decisions, and better outcomes for patients and the people who love them. Seen this way, education is not a compliance checkbox. It is the foundation of the care we deliver.

Q: Where is technology, including AI, taking this?

A: Toward making reflection easier, richer, and more useful. The promise of new tools, including AI, is not to add another portal but to help physicians capture insight in the moment, a case, a question at the point of care, an article, a podcast, a conversation, and to surface the patterns in their own learning that are hard to see alone. Used well, technology can turn scattered experience into deliberate, cumulative growth.

The most promising vision is one where learning, practice, and improvement stop living in separate silos. Insight from clinical work informs learning; learning sharpens the next encounter; and shared, de-identified understanding helps the whole community raise the quality of care. The technology matters only insofar as it serves that very human loop, the physician learning, in context, for the benefit of the patient in front of them and the next one. None of it replaces clinical judgment or a physician’s own curiosity; it supports them.

Q: What should physicians and medical societies advance next?

A: Treat education as the foundation it is. Reward reflective practice, support the move toward standardized reporting and credit that reflects real clinical learning, and keep reducing administrative load so the focus stays on learning. Physicians across Los Angeles and California, in every specialty, have a part in shaping this, because the commitment to learn from each patient in order to serve the next is what unites us. The future of continuing education is bright, and it belongs to the clinicians who never stop learning.