(Written by Manoel with latest updates by Pat.)

To support continuing medical education (CME), many universities — including top institutions like Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Yale — offer free medical online courses and webinars.

These include free certificates of completion like the ones above, and often also a transcript. Furthermore, if you’re a healthcare professional, they also carry continuing medical education credit (CME credit).

In this Class Central article, I’ve compiled all the platforms I’ve found. Combined, they offer over 1000 medical online courses and webinars, with free certificates and CME credit.

We recommend you take careful note of any dates mentioned on course pages. For example, many have an end date, after which the certificate and CME credit are no longer available. You may still be able to watch the videos, but cannot gain recognition after the closing date.

We’ll continue to update this article as we find more platforms. If you know a platform that fits the article and isn’t listed below yet, please share it in the comments.

• What’s continuing medical education (CME)?
• How to enroll in CME courses?
• How to earn CME certificates?
• Where to take CME courses?
  • Stanford
  • Johns Hopkins
  • Dartmouth
  • Brown
  • California
  • Chicago
  • Pennsylvania
  • Yale
  • Columbia

Understanding Continuing Medical Education (CME)

Medical research is very active. Every year in the US, more students earn doctoral degrees in life sciences than in any other field. And in most EU countries, medical sciences are the primary recipients of research funding. This is only natural. We’re talking about people’s health. The stakes are high.

Since the medical field evolves rapidly, lifelong learning is an integral part of medical professions. Continuing medical education (CME) simply formalizes this necessity. It consists of activities, including courses and webinars, that allow healthcare professionals to keep up with development in their fields.

These activities lead to certificates and carry continuing medical education credit (CME credit) in proportion with the activities’ length and depth. In many places around the world, healthcare professionals must earn CME credit on an ongoing basis to demonstrate their continued competency.

While primarily geared toward healthcare professionals, fortunately, these activities are often accessible to everyone, even those of use that don’t work in healthcare. And sometimes, they’re even free. In this article, we focus on online platforms that offer free CME resources available to everyone.

Enrolling in CME Courses

After spending some time researching CME platforms, you start to notice some patterns.

For one, most med schools offer CME activities. Some only organize in-person activities. But often, they also offer online activities in the form of courses or webinar recordings — so called enduring or on-demand materials.

Additionally, universities typically rely on third-party platforms to organize their online CME activities and issue certificates. A couple of platforms seem to be particularly popular. I’ve come across these quite often:

• CloudCME — used by Stanford and Johns Hopkins, among others
• EthosCE — used by Brown and Chicago, among others.

The advantage of these platforms being popular is that once you’ve tried them, you’ll feel comfortable navigating the CME platforms of most universities, at least US-based ones.

The sign up process, in particular, is almost always the same. Compared to platforms like Coursera, CME platforms tend to ask for more information, including your phone number, address, and current degree.

If you don’t want to share that information, you can just fill in random values. They don’t verify phone numbers. But know that the degree information you input will usually be appended to your name on certificates, and the address will typically show up on your transcript, so you might want to fill in sensible values.

Earning CME Certificates

After finishing an online CME activity, you’ll have to complete a posttest to demonstrate your learning. These typically involve 2 to 10 multiple-choice questions, specifically about the activity’s content.

Some instructors make their posttests very easy — sometimes concerningly so, since some posttests just involve ticking a checkbox promising that you’ve watched the CME videos in full. I found this a bit alarming, considering these activities are used for the ongoing validation of clinicians’ knowledge.

Other instructors make their posttests quite difficult, testing learners on minute and sometimes subjective details, verifying programmatically that the learner watched the CME videos in full before unlocking the posttest, and allowing learners only two attempts to pass the posttest.

If you achieve a passing grade in your posttest, you’ll typically be asked to fill a survey evaluating the quality of the CME activity. Once you’ve filled the survey, you’ll have access to your certificate of completion, or the certificate will be emailed to you within a day.

Additionally, most platforms will also allow you to access and print a transcript listing all the CME activities you’ve completed on the platform. You can see my Stanford transcript above.

CME Platforms

Here are the CME platforms I’ve explored. Combined, they offer over 1000 CME activities, most of them with free certificates, and for healthcare professionals, CME credit. As mentioned above, if you need the certificate or CME credits, check that the course is still offering them, since many courses do not offer certificates or credits after a particular date.

We’ll continue to expand the list as we find new platforms. If you have other recommendations, please share them in the comments.

Stanford Free CME Courses

Stanford Medicine offers more than 750 online learning resources in the medical field, from podcasts to full-fledged courses, many including free certificates of completion and CME credit. Learners also have access to a formal transcript from Stanford, listing all the training they’ve completed.

Here are some of the free resources available on the platform:

• Podcast: The Stanford Medcast, a biweekly 30-minute medical podcast. Each episode focuses on a new topic, often related to recent medical developments.  You can find them all here.
• Webinar: The Pediatric Grand Rounds, a series of hour-long on-demand webinars, where experts discuss various topics related to children’s healthcare. Here’s a webinar that focuses on  Pediatric epilepsy.
• Online Course: Diagnosis and Management of Migraines, To Prescribe or Not To Prescribe? Antibiotics and Outpatient Infections, and Health Across the Gender Spectrum, to name a few.

You can find Stanford’s entire CME catalog here.

If you’d like to learn more about Stanford CME, I’ve written a detailed article about the platform: Stanford Medicine Offers Courses with Free Certificate & CME Credit.

Johns Hopkins Free CME Courses

Johns Hopkins University offers close to 300 online CME activities, including mini-courses, webinars, and grand rounds, which involve discussing specific patients, their treatment, and outcomes, to turn these cases into learning opportunities.

Here are some of the free resources available on the platform:

• Saving Sight: Vision Protection & Blindness Prevention in Diabetes
• The Importance of Good Medical Record Documentation
• Strategies to Improve Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination Rates Among College Students
• Treatment of Opioid Dependence
• Management of Low Back Pain.

You can find Johns Hopkins’ entire CME catalog here.

Dartmouth Free CME Courses

Dartmouth University offers 250 online CME activities, almost all free, including grand rounds and webinars on topics such as patient and pain management, pediatrics, organ donations, and sexual violence.

Here are some of the free resources available on the platform:

• When Nurse Leaders Speak, Legislators Listen
• Treatment of Complex Chronic Pain
• Calming and De-Escalation
• Kinematics of Trauma.

You can find Dartmouth’s entire CME catalog here.

Note that on this platform, you may have to click on the “Purchase” button to take a course, giving you the impression you’ll have to pay, but the on the checkout page, price will actually be $0.

Brown Free CME Courses

Brown University offers more than 10 free online CME activities on topics including psychiatry and opioid use disorders.

Here are some of the free resources available on the platform:

• Reducing Physician Burnout
• Clinical Practice Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Pain and Best Practices for Managing Acute Pain
• Buprenorphine Prescribing for Opioid Use Disorder in Primary Care
• Acute Pain and Opioid Use Disorder
• Stigma: Its Impact and What You Can Do
• Addiction Medicine Tips for Community Health Centers.

You can find Brown’s entire CME catalog here.

California Free CME Courses

The University of California has CME platforms for its various campuses, including UCSF, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Davis, and UC Irvine. Currently, you need to check the individual campus sites, but they are planning to amalgamate them all onto one platform in the future. Stay tuned!

In total, the University of California offers more than 40 free CME activities on topics such as diabetes, addiction, and emotional wellbeing.

Here are some of the free resources:

• Teen Dating Violence
• Person-Centered Integrative East-West Approach in Addressing Chronic Pain
• The Importance of Being Centered for Self-Care and Reducing Burnout.

You can find courses from the various campuses here:

• UCSF: currently 15 courses focusing mainly on addiction and tobacco issues
• UCLA: currently 12 courses focusing on long covid and disabilities
• UC San Diego: currently 7 courses on arthritis and ultrasound training
• UC Irvine: currently 12 courses focusing mainly on heart attack and stroke issues.

Chicago Free CME Courses

The University of Chicago offers over 40 online CME activities, many of them free. These discuss topics related to various areas of medical research, such as oncology, palliative care, and pediatrics.

Here are some of the free resources available on the platform:

• Interventional Radiology and Surgical Management of the Trauma Patient
• Dementia Awareness, Evaluation, and Care for the Healthcare Professional
• Opioids 2022: New Guidelines, Ongoing Challenges
• Managing Pain During Serious Illness.

You can find Chicago’s entire CME catalog here.

Penn Free CME Courses

The University of Pennsylvania offers just over 20 free online CME activities. These include mini-courses and webinar recordings on both purely medical topics as well as topics surrounding the medical field, such as the laws and ethics of doctor-patient confidentiality.

Here are some of the free resources available on the platform:

• Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research
• Ethics and Trial Design
• Evidence-based Prescribing: An Online Course with Tools You Can Use to Fight the Opioid Epidemic
• Focus on Opioid Use Disorder and Treatment: The Genetics of Addiction-How Discovery Is Informing the Path Forward for Opioid Use Disorder Treatment, Intervention, and Prevention
• Opioid Use Disorder for Hospitalists in the Fentanyl Era
• Penn Medicine Opioid Stewardship 2022: Comprehensive Pain Management: Opioids and Beyond
• Rationing Care
• Re-Imagining Emergency Department Care for Substance Use Disorders
• Research in Global Settings

You can find Penn’s entire CME catalog here.

Yale Free CME Courses

Yale University offers 14 online CME activities, almost all free. These range from gut health to microaggression in clinical situations, and HIV/AIDS.

Here are some of the free resources available on the platform:

• Digestive Health Virtual CME Series 2022: Third Thursdays Trust your Gut
• The GI Hospitalist Model: Addressing the Needs of Hospital-Based Care
• Annual Clinical Intersection of HIV/AIDS: A Practical Discussion of Connecticut’s Course Mandates
• 2021 Trust Your Gut Webinar Series.

You can find Yale’s entire CME catalog here.

Columbia Free CME Courses

Columbia University offers a free webinar about celiac disease:

• Quality of Life in Celiac Disease. What Are the Factors Contributing to Quality of Life and How Can We Do a Better Job?

You can find Columbia’s entire CME catalog here.

More Free Certificates

If you don’t find what you need in the course lists above, browse Class Central’s catalog of over 200K courses or visit our thematic collections:

• Massive List of Thousands of Free Certificates & Badges
• Stanford Medicine Offers Courses with Free Certificate & CME Credit
• Medical Education Platforms with 1000+ Free Certificates & CME Credit
• 1000 Open University Free Certificates
• 70+ FutureLearn Courses with Free Certificates
• 600 Free Google Certifications

You can find all the Class Central free certificate articles here.