As a medical professional, you'll have to complete continuing medical education on a regular basis. These classes are fantastic opportunities for learning the latest procedures and research outcomes, but they also offer another opportunity that you should consider: learning about the latest preventive medicine procedures and theories. Preventing people from becoming ill or injured in the first place is a lot better than seeing them only after they've developed a condition. If you know the latest information, you can better serve your patients.

Why Even Let Anything Get to That Point?

There's something to be said for avoiding over-treatment; it's a major problem that mainly increases costs for the patient and puts them in a constant state of alert. You don't want people to run their whole lives as if medical prevention were the only goal they should have. However, showing people how simple preventive techniques can keep them healthy in the long-term is valuable and makes life a lot easier for everyone.

There's simply no reason to let someone's health habits and lifestyle involuntarily be such that the person will likely have chronic health problems down the road. You obviously can't force people to follow preventive practices, but giving them the information only for them to ignore it is much, much different than never telling them about preventive practices in the first place. In other words, if you tell them they can prevent future health issues by walking more, and they choose not to walk, that is their decision; but if you don't say anything about improving health through exercise, then the patient has no reason to suspect that they could make changes to begin with.

Prior Emphasis on Treating, Rather Than Preventing

Much of the emphasis in medical education has been on treating, rather than preventing. While there are health conditions that can be treated and cured like a mechanic working on a biologically based car, many are more difficult to handle. Knowing tactics that will let patients avoid those health conditions -- or at least reduce the risk of developing them -- sets the patients on a new course toward a healthier life overall that doesn't require as much treatment.

Simple Prevention Techniques May Apply to Many Conditions

As researchers learn more about how a healthy lifestyle and other preventive measures can impact people, they also learn that simple tactics can prevent or reduce the chances of developing multiple conditions. Reserving some of your CME time for classes on new developments in preventive medicine lets you stay on top of the changes.

When you sign up for CME classes, save some time for preventing chronic disease medical courses. Your knowledge helps your patients avoid the chronic diseases that many others are already dealing with.