To investigate the present status of the current continuing medical education (CME) model and the acceptance and feasibility of new continuing education models, so as to provide reference information for the development of new continuing education models.

We conducted an electronic questionnaire survey on physicians on the job in ultrasonic medicine in Beijing by simple random sampling. The questionnaire contained three parts: the physicians' basic information, the current status of CME, and the reform demands for new continuing medical education models. The basic information included gender, age, education, professional title, working years, hospital classification, and the proportion of deputy senior and senior professional titles to department members. The information on the current status of CME included the frequency of teaching activities, the ways to improve vocational ability, the awareness, satisfaction, degree of recognition for the improvement of professional competency, degree of affordability, the ways to obtain credits, and the reasons why continuing education did not meet the standards. The reform requirements for new CME models included the willingness to participate, learning content and form of new CME models, the awareness of the concepts of CME and continuing professional development, and the degree of consent to the learning concepts such as continuous learning and informal learning. Rank-sum tests were used to compare the status of continuing education and reform needs with regard to gender, age, educational qualification, professional title, years of service, and hospital level.

There was no difference in the awareness of the CME system among physicians with regard to gender, age group, educational background, professional title, working years, and hospital level. 35.25% of physicians had insufficient comprehension of the current CME system. There was no difference in the satisfaction of physicians with the CME system with regard to gender, age group, educational background, professional title, and hospital level, but there was a difference in the satisfaction among those with different working years (H=12.956, P=0.011), with the satisfaction of the 11-15 years group significantly higher than that of the over 20 years group (P=0.017). Based on feedback from physicians, 12.50% and 8.75% of physicians, respectively, were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the current CME system, mainly due to the lack of diversity and convenience in the form and the insufficiency of richness, systematicness, pertinence, and practicality in the contents. 13.50% of physicians agreed that CME was not helpful for their professional competences, and 20.75%, 15.50%, and 39.75% of physicians, respectively, strongly agreed, agreed, and basically agreed CME to be a burden. Physicians had a higher awareness of the concept of CME than that of continuous professional development (P<0.001). 82.00% and 73.50% of physicians, respectively, agreed with the learning concept of "continuous learning" and "informal learning". There were significant differences in the cognition of the concept of "continuous learning" among physicians with different professional titles (junior/intermediate/associate and senior) (P=0.005), with the cognition of the associate and senior group significantly higher than that of the junior group (P=0.004). As suggested, the form of CME should be both online and offline, and training contents should include professional knowledge (voting rate of 90.75%), research ability (voting rate of 63.75%), teaching ability (voting rate of 57.00%), science popularization ability (voting rate of 39.50%), and English (voting rate of 32.25%), as well as any content that can improve professional competences. 82.50% of physicians would like to develop individual learning plan and study independently, and 35.75% (143/400) would be very willing and 32.75% (131/400) would be willing to participate in the new continuing education mode of physicians-centered autonomous learning.

The current continuing education system has certain disadvantages in contents and forms. Physicians have clear reform aspirations and demands. The development of new continuing education models can be very helpful in improving the quality of CME.