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.