The ACCME has announced the addition of four new board of director’s members. The new members include Mira Irons, MD; Carol S Havens, MD; David Pieper;,PhD;and Johns Hopkins’ own Todd Dorman, MD.
These new board of directors will start to serve their terms as of the March 2012 meeting.
As part of our ACCME reaccreditation process we hosted two surveyors on Monday November 14th for a face-to-face review session.
The surveyors had only a few clarifying questions regarding the Self Study but nothing major. They asked for clarification on all of the following items:
Additionally, they had a few questions regarding the activity files that were reviewed. Again, most of these were just questions to be sure they understood what we provided or to seek clarity of materials not provided for activities that had not yet been completed as of the filing date
The next steps are as follows:
The Annual Fall Society for Academic CME meeting was held on Saturday November 7th in Boston in conjunction with the annual AAMC meeting. The attendance was higher than any fall meeting in the documented history of SACME and those in attendance were treated to an absolutely wonderful set of presentations.
The morning started with two classic presentations by senior officers from the AAMC. Atul Grover, the AAMC Chief Advocacy Officer, reviewed healthcare reform and helped identify a few areas in which a significant role for CME exists. This was followed by a presentation by Ann Bonham, the Chief Scientific Officer, that focused principally on knowledge translation as the obvious major role for CME.
These were followed by an interactive presentation by Kelly Skeff from Stanford who spoke on Caring for the Carer. The eye opening presentation was about training healthcare faculty to be teachers and served as an entrée to the topic of faculty development which will be the major focus of the SACME Annual Spring meeting in April 2010.
I moderated a session entitled Hot Topics, a session classically arranged and moderated by the SACME President-elect. The session included updates on a national stakeholder meeting for funding in CME, the Mayo Consensus Conference, the CMSS Task Force on Professionalism, the Macy funded project on Lifelong learning and upcoming changes by the ACCME.
The afternoon included two panels that helped model better ways to do presentations. Both utilized ARS and both encouraged significant interchange between the panelists and the audience. I was fortunate to participate in one of the panels and this panel actually started with a short play that helped engage the audience and to break down some barriers to participation.
Significant changes to the rules and policies related to certified CME activities have occurred over the last few years. A couple of these are very important and all attendees and speakers at CME activities should be aware. The first is the extension of the restriction on involvement of commercial entities to include the fact that a commercial entity should not be involved in any manner, either directly or nuanced in the selection of content or speakers. Previously accredited providers were in charge of the decisions, but suggestions from commercial entities were permitted. This is simply no longer acceptable. The impact of this change on concerns related to bias of content or topics in CME has not yet been assessed as it is simply too soon. The second important change also relates to involvement of individuals with ties to commercial entities and their ability to participate as teachers in certified activities. Previously employees, full or part time, from these commercial entities could serve as instructors in certified CME, but with significant restrictions in place. Now, the rules are that such individuals cannot participate as an instructor in a certified activity related to any product or topic of relevance for that commercial entity. The impact of this change as it relates to concerns regarding bias has also not yet been assessed. Accredited providers need to be aware of these changes and help educate all members of the medical community to avoid breaches even if unintended.
Putting together high-quality evidence-based presentations takes a lot of time and effort. During the process of putting an original presentation together, new knowledge may be uncovered and the presenter will learn from the process itself. The presenter may learn additional information that solidifies their present understanding of an issue or they may uncover evidence that alters their approach to a topic. Throughout though they are learning! This self-awareness independent-study process can be quite useful for adult learners and firmly fits established adult learning principles.
The learner who uncovers new information may change the material that was to be presented to reflect this evidence or may change how they choose to present (e.g. instructional design) the evidence to the audience. In addition, the presenter may uncover evidence that alters how they themselves conduct their practice of medicine. The AMA has an established type of credit for this type of learning scenario.
I am attaching the application we presently use for this activity and embedded within the application is the evaluation form. This has not been vetted or approved by the ACCME, but we think after extensive review that this meets all relevant AMA and ACCME standards. Like all learning organizations, we strive to continually improve and in such spirit we would readily suggest that the needs aspect of the application could and will be enhanced in subsequent versions by including more information related to adult learning principles and independent study.
Download the application and embedded evaluation form (PDF).