A continuous process of acquiring new knowledge and skills throughout one's professional life. As undergraduate and postgraduate education is insufficient to ensure lifelong physicians' competencies, it is essential to maintain the competencies of physicians, to remedy gaps in skills, and to enable professionals to respond to the challenges of rapidly growing knowledges and technologies, changing health needs and the social, political and economic factors of the practise of medicine. Continuing medical education depends highly upon learner motivation and self-directed learning skills.