Patient voices takes center stage at the 18th annual European CME Forum

I recently attended the 18th Annual European CME Forum (ECF18), held in Manchester (aka my home town, and the best city in my opinion). One of my favourite sessions was hosted by Sarah Nisly (Clinical Education Alliance) and Kathryn Burn (Smart Patients), titled “Enhancing Continuing Professional Development Through Patient Voices”. 

Sarah and Kathryn did a great job in addressing the practical and strategic dimensions of involving patients in CME using a mixture of best-practice theory and real-life examples. This discussion emphasized how patient narratives and lived experiences can drive positive behavior change among healthcare professionals. There are many examples of how this can be done in an impactful way, for example: 

• The patient lived experience can help to identify suboptimal healthcare practices 
• Patient insights can identify discrepancies between their perceptions of ‘best patient care’ vs HCP assumptions about the same 
• Patient voices can enhance HCP empathy, increase awareness of patient concerns, and improve clinical decision-making 

Many studies have demonstrated the real-life impact of patient voices within CME programs, such as: 

• HCP impact: Increased empathy, increased knowledge retention, and better clinical practice 
• Patient impact: Increased therapy adherence and shared decision-making 
• Cultural impact: Fosters understanding between all HC stakeholders 

Throughout the session, we examined key implementation questions, including how to identify and recruit effective patient educators; how to structure their involvement in program design including orientation and preparation; how to truly partner with patients and co-design programs that meet their needs; how to deliver the program with them and support them along the way, and how to measure impact beyond traditional satisfaction metrics. 

Two resources discussed that I will definitely be looking into more are: 

1. Smart Patients – an online community for patients and their families : https://www.smartpatients.com/ 
2. The ACCME Patient-Provider Roadmap: https://accme.org/resource/patient-engagement-resources/ 

As the CME community continues to evolve, ECF18 made clear that patient engagement is not just a trend—it’s a transformative strategy for meaningful, measurable learning.