There are four prominent challenges encountered during conferences for CPD which include:

Firstly, the success of conferences is often evaluated with traditional metrics e.g. participant satisfaction indicators. Secondly, conference attendees are often seen as a homogenous group. Thirdly, it is often dismissed that novice members attend conferences as a way of integrating into the community of practice. Lastly, visiting a conference is an established way of disseminating information, however, taking the knowledge from conferences and translating it into practice is difficult.

The overarching aim of this PhD is to investigate how to evaluate and improve large-scale health professional conferences, in order to support learning and induce physician practice change.

PhD supervisor: Prof. Dr. Dr. med Sören Huwendiek, MME, PhD student: Sai Sreenidhi Ram
Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kevin Eva, Centre for Health Education Scholarship, Vancouver Canada
Further Supervisor: Prof. Dr. med. Daiana Stolz, Universitätsspital Basel

European Respiratory Society (ERS)

Sören Huwendiek, Sai Sreenidhi Ram