Continuing Medical Education (CME) is crucial to help medical professionals keep their skills sharp, offer better care, and ensure they can continue to work legally. However, these courses, workshops, or conferences are often quite expensive, and this cost can serve as a barrier that may prevent some professionals from participating.
Thankfully, there are several free CME courses available, which help clinicians stay current and maintain their licenses without the high out-of-pocket costs. This guide goes over some of the best free CME providers that every clinician should know, and why they (and their courses) stand out.
Healio CME
Healio is a free CME provider and online education platform that offers courses in a variety of areas, including ophthalmology, dermatology, cardiology, and many others. The site also offers news, podcasts, and columns about the industry and is full of useful information and discussions.
It’s easy to track your credits on the platform, and it offers various types of educational content, such as videos, case studies, interactive activities, and more. The platform is available on-demand on many devices, and while some courses are longer and more in-depth, you can finish others in as little as 15 minutes.
Some of the free CME courses it offers include a course about screening, identifying, and tailoring management strategies for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), as well as one focused on lens-based refractive surgery for myopia correction.
Med-IQ CME
Med-IQ is a platform that aims to offer education to help providers at all levels of the healthcare delivery system improve care and boost patient outcomes. Medical professionals can access a variety of types of free CME on the platform, such as text-based courses, videos, and interactive activities.
It provides educational content in several different areas, like cardiology, pediatrics, oncology, neurology, and many others. Med-IQ also strategically collaborates with experts in areas like patient care, risk management, patient safety, and advocacy to try to achieve better healthcare for all.
A few of the specific courses it offers include one about managing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, another that looks at advancements in lung transplant surgery, and one that goes over emerging novel therapies for recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.
MLI Education
Medical Learning Institute (MLI) is a non-profit provider of evidence-based and free CME that looks to improve patient outcomes by positively impacting the practice behavior of healthcare teams. Whether you’re a physician, dietitian, pharmacist, or nurse, MLI has CME to help improve your abilities and freshen up your skills.
You can easily view the credit hours, availability, and types of credits offered for each course, and the platform offers courses across therapeutic areas like breast cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, and several others.
Some examples of courses it offers include an activity designed to support pediatricians in delivering effective care to children and adolescents with obesity, and one that helps endocrinologists deliver personalized care for patients with type 2 diabetes.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy Center
The Pain Reprocessing Therapy Center is a leading provider of evidence-based pain recovery education for healthcare professionals. It’s aimed at helping these professionals learn techniques to help patients break the cycle of chronic pain, reduce fear, and more.
It offers both on-demand and live training, accredited courses, and acts as a hub for patients and professionals alike to access PRT-based care. The training covers the neuroscience behind chronic pain, breaking the pain-fear cycle, Somatic Tracking, and more.
While not everything offered here is completely free, it offers a free 1-hour introductory course that offers a comprehensive overview of pain recovery therapies.
Pri-Med CME
Pri-Med prides itself on offering affordable and accessible CME for primary care clinicians. It offers both in-person and virtual courses, with both on-demand and live options to choose from. It has hundreds of free courses for primary care doctors, those providing emergency care, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and others.
Pri-Med offers courses in various specialties like infectious diseases, pharmacology, orthopedics, pain management, and countless others. It delivers information in several ways, such as webcasts, interactive learning activities, podcasts, videos, and more.
Scientia Free CME
ScientiaCME’s accredited CME courses are designed to provide practicing professionals with high-quality education. The platform hopes to fill gaps in professional knowledge for a variety of jobs, including physicians, pharmacists, physician associates, nurses, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare professionals.
It has a huge selection of courses, many of which are free, across areas like dermatology, psychiatry, hematology, podiatry, neurology, and others. Some examples of the types of free courses that the provider offers include one about osteoporosis in aging men, a course about neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, as well as one focused on helping patients suffering from asthma.
If you want to learn more about free CME and the options available to you, don’t hesitate to check out CMEList’s list of free CME courses and providers.