• Home

CME a must for medical practitioners

DUBAI — Starting January, medical practitioners in the UAE will need to complete the required hours of Continuous Medical Education (CME) by the Ministry of Health, failure of which might lead to revocation of their licence.

Speaking to Khaleej Times, Dr Abdul Ghaffar M. Al Hawi, Assistant Under-Secretary for Curative Medicine at the Ministry of Health, said that doctors would be required to complete 50 hours while nurses and other medical staff would need to complete 30 hours in a year.

"If the practitioners do not complete the required hours, their licences will not be renewed," he added.

Describing the mechanism, Al Hawi said that all the practitioners will be provided with electronic cards by the Ministry of Health which will be punched in at the venue of medical conferences. "These machines will register the presence of doctors at conferences, besides registering the duration of their participation," he said.

He said that though this plan was to be implemented last year, objections from doctors saying that not enough conferences were being organised by the country delayed the implementation by a year.

Al Hawi said the ministry has been playing a major role in encouraging doctors in both the government and private sectors to gain CME through participation in quality training sessions, lectures and conferences.

"These training sessions are necessary to develop skills and expertise of doctors practising in this region," he added.