Background: Obtaining speakers for various continuing medical education (CME) programs can be a challenging and sometimes frustrating process.
Purpose: The goal of this study was to quantify the difficulty in recruiting speakers for CME.
Methods: A retrospective review of planning documents from three CME programs for family physicians was conducted. Descriptive analysis and analysis of variance testing was performed on the data collected.
Results: In all three programs, obtaining speakers has become more difficult over the past 3 years with 1.75 [standard deviation (SD)=1.46] to 2.32 (SD=1.85) mean requests. Finding speakers for rural programs is more challenging than local CME sessions with 2.11 (SD=1.78) compared with 1.68 (SD=1.12) mean requests, respectively. University faculty represent 45.7% of CME speakers.
Conclusions: This is the first study to document the increasing difficulty of recruiting speakers for CME. This significant difficulty in speaker recruitment has several implications for the CME offices and physician learners.