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The objective of this paper is to explore how learning needs of physicians are best achieved when planning for appropriate continuing medical education activities.

This paper examines the informal types of needs‐assessment as opposed to formal types when identifying the learning needs of physicians.

This paper projects how informal types of needs‐assessment probe more deeply into the opinions and perceptions of physicians, thus complementing with formal methods when planning appropriate academic activities.

Informal types of needs‐assessment show promise in deriving a physician's individual learning needs, but has limitations as the educational activities proposed and undertaken would not necessarily benefit a larger group and, as they are usually unshared, would result in unimpressive utilization of educational resources.

Although the method of informal needs‐assessment is noteworthy, when planning academic activities on a larger scale and for wider gain, the formal methods of needs‐assessment are to be preferred.

This paper establishes that the informal method of needs‐assessment is significant in obtaining the true learning needs of the physicians but should always be complemented by formal methods.

The objective of this paper is to build an understanding of how to bring about change, improve relationships, facilitate knowledge creation and sharing, and support coherence and sense‐making among clinical faculty with little or no background in medical education.

In this process the conventional Delphi approach was used, as it was believed that it would help in gaining the most reliable agreement of opinions of a diverse group of faculty members in the shortest time.

The paper finds that the instructional and assessment tools and approaches that were being used were mostly traditional. The challenge was to get them to a consensus as most of the faculty/teachers were unsure about replacing the traditional approaches which were “time tested” to newer “evidence‐based” methodology. This paper demonstrates that four features – namely, anonymity, iteration, controlled feedback and cumulative statistical group response – are the key contributory factors to moving the “unsure group” to an agreement.

Conventional silent technique shows promise in getting the “non‐educationists” on the same page without much friction, but has limitations as it was limited to a specific group and a single university setting.

This process created connections between the faculty members that carry a long‐lasting effect and not just the resolution of the problem of the day.

This paper establishes that this exercise will bring about a positive change in the attitude and practices of the faculty /teachers and can help them to implement “evidence based” methodology for teaching and learning.