Smith describes the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education's provider approval program, a mechanism for assessing the quality of available continuing education programs. She maintains that the issue is not one of mandatory continuing education, but of ensuring the existence of programing which uses accepted principles of adult education. (SK)

Ohliger debates the issues raised by Smith (CE 511 136), taking the view that mandatory continuing education is an unacceptable method of ensuring professional quality because it is inherently contradictory to the definition of professionalism, and its effectiveness has not been demonstrated convincingly. (SK)