Lesson Plan: Planning CME for Physicians

Planning Accredited Continuing Medical Education (CME) Conferences for Physicians

Target Audience:  Educational planners, consisting of physician planners and administrative professionals who plan CME meetings for physicians.

See online module by Loyola University - http://www.stritch.luc.edu/lumen/MedEd/softchalkhdht/CMEFacDevWebPage/index.html

 

Program Overview: This course is designed to train educational planner in developing programs that are designed to address clinical practice gaps, which medical professionals can utilize to improve patient care

Program Objectives:

After completion of the program, participants will be able to:

1. Recognize the Importance of CME (ACCME Handouts) 
2.  Understand what clinical gaps are and how they might affect patient care 
3.  Identify and utilize websites that are sources to identify competency requirements to identify clinical gaps 
4.  Recognize and Implement the Accreditation Criteria of the ACCME

Handouts:

Why Accredited CME is Important  (ACCME) - http://accme.org/printpdf/for-public/why-accredited-cme-is-important

Accountable to the Public (ACCME)

Examples of Profesisonal Practice Gap – ACCME Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5in8yOzgWuQ&feature=player_embedded

Accreditation Criteria
 - http://accme.org/requirements/accreditation-requirements-cme-providers/accreditation-criteria

Standards for Commerical Support - http://accme.org/printpdf/requirements/accreditation-requirements-cme-providers/standards-for-commercial-support

 

Wiki Assignment:

After completing the online course, student groups must develop a Wiki site to demonstrate their understanding of the principles presented.                                               10 points maximum.

Based upon the contents of this online course, group members must develop a Wiki that can be utilized as an assessment of the course materials. This should cover relevant ACCME Criteria presented in the course.  Develop a combination of 10 multiple choice, Yes/No, and open-ended questions to assess knowledge gained after completion of the course. Be creative and interactive. It is desirable to  provide participants immediate feedback, if possible.

Grading Rubric - 10 Points Maximum

9-10	7-8	5-6	3-4	1-2
All ACCME criteria presented were addressed. Layout was appealing with appropriate graphics Appropriate Questions were drafted Assessment was formulated to allow immediate feedback Information was clearly presented	Most ACCME criteria presented were addressed. Layout was appealing with appropriate graphics Appropriate Questions were drafted Assessment was formulated to allow immediate feedback Information was clearly presented	Some ACCME criteria presented were addressed. Appropriate Questions were drafted Assessment was formulated to allow immediate feedback Information was clearly presented	Some ACCME criteria presented were addressed. Appropriate Questions were drafted Assessment was completed	Activity was completed Some ACCME criteria presented were addressed. Questions were drafted

References:

Loyola University School of Medicine, Continuing Medical Education Department. CME at Loyola University Medical Center  A Primer for CME Course Directors. Retrieved from  http://www.stritch.luc.edu/lumen/MedEd/softchalkhdht/CMEFacDevWebPage/index.html?mobile=false&page=CMEFacDevWebPage11.html

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CME at Loyola University Medical Center
A Primer for CME Course Directors

 
Understanding ACCME's Updated Criteria for Accreditation
This module is meant to educate CME Course Directors at Stritch on the educational theory
and planning processes required for compliance with ACCME's updated criteria for accrediting Continuing Medical Education.
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Driving Force in CME
The driving force in contemporary CME is the data that suggests that contemporary health care is not measuring up to expectations in terms of desired health outcomes.
Actual care lags behind expected or desired care.

There is a performance gap!

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CME as an Ecosystem
The ACCME (Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education) invites CME providers to play an important role in helping to narrow the performance gaps of practicing clinicians. In the contemporary health care environment, CME needs to serve as a "change agent" - an ecosystem linked to professional practice that is meant to:

• Change behaviors to
• Enhance performance to
• Improve Patient Outcomes

for the sake of continuous quality improvement in health care delivery.

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 Historical Perspective CME traditionally was an activity directed to the exchange of information and the transmission of knowledge.
Licensure, specialty certification and hospital credentialing demanded a system that assured the ongoing acquisition of knowledge by practicing clinicians.
For this type of CME activity, educators simply asked themselves "What interesting topic should we lecture on?"

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Today...
Contemporary health care is vastly more complex.
Consequently CME needs to be more focused and purposeful.
Clinicians must not only know, they must know how to, and they must do well whatever is called for by the patients they treat.
CME today must play a role at all three levels...

• Transmitting knowledge
• Enhancing competence
• Improving performance

for the sake of improved patient outcomes (quality improvement).
CME has a stake in providing clinicians with not only knowledge but practical and targeted strategies that can change
behavior and enhance performance in everyday practice.
Providers of continuing medical education are now being challenged to ask their learners:

• "What do you plan to do with the new information you have been given?"
• "What will you do differently in your practice?
• "Has doing so made a difference in your patients' health?"

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What ACCME requires...

Planning your CME Event: Performance Gap Analysis Determination of Educational Needs Setting your Goals for the Activity Stating your Learning Objectives

Developing your Educational Activity Creating Evidence-based content Choosing your Educational Format (lecture, discussion, role play, panel, simulation activity) Assuring independence from Commercial Support (disclosure, resolving conflict of interest)

Analyzing the Impact of your Activity Gathering information on changes in knowledge, confidence, intent to change practice, measure performance

Setting your Plan for the Future to Address Ongoing Gaps, and Educational Needs

These requirements are reflected in each of the steps of the Application that you submit for approval of your CME Activity.

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Step I: Planning Your CME Event
Practice Gap Analysis and Assessing the Needs of Your Learners
Why am I doing this educational activity?
This is the critical question that should be the starting point for any CME activity.

In the answer to this question lies the relevance of your activity to the needs of your audience,
and the potential for effecting change in your learner's performance.
CME planners should query themselves in the following fashion:

• What problem (in clinical practice) do we want to address?
• Is this a significant problem for our learners?
• What is the magnitude of the problem? (so you can track outcome improvement)
• Why does the problem exist?
• What change do we seek?
• What should we do to make change happen?

This is the part of educational planning that is about practice gap analysis and needs assessment.
Practice gaps are expressions or manifestations of a need on the part of the clinicians who are your learners.
You are encouraged to investigate real practice gaps and practice-based needs for your activity by taking advantage of internal and external sources of performance data:

• Performance databases and web sites (i.e., AHQR)
• Input and Feedback from your Learners
• Institutional Performance Data and Benchmarks
• Practice-Based Audits

Having identified and quantified a practice gap that you wish to address in your activity, you reflect on the educational needs that underlie the problem.
The need may be a need for new information, but it may be a need to provide clinicians with practical strategies, behavioral skills, or system improvement information.
These needs must be given consideration in your educational planning of CME.
You are then expected to develop and articulate concrete learning objectives linked to the needs you have identified among your learners.
This process has a funneling effect going from broad and general to more specific:

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Step II: Designing your CME activity

Developing Your Content and Choosing an Effective Educational Format
Having selected the educational needs that you will address, you then develop the evidence-based content and choose the format of your activity.
The traditional CME activity targets knowledge-based needs and then, typically, employs a lecture as the educational delivery format.
But when seeking to address learners' needs that are more performance-based, might not learning activities that are more hands-on
such as simulations, role play, panel discussions be called for?
We invite you to consider including more dynamic learning formats into your CME activities where appropriate.

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Step III: Assuring the Integrity of the Educational Process
"The concepts of independence from industry and collaboration with industry in the development of CME content are mutually exclusive.
Although commercial interests may provide commercial support for educational activities as defined by the ACCME's Standards for Commercial Support,
there is no role for ACCME-defined commercial interests in the content-planning, development or evaluation of accredited CME activities." (ACCME)
This defines the "independence" of CME.
The steps required by ACCME to assure independence from commercial support included:

• Providing disclosures for all planners, reviewers, and speakers for your activity
• Making disclosure to the audience (either verbally, or in written form)
• Resolving all conflicts of interest prior to the activity
• Processing all monetary sources according to ACCME standards
• Managing vendors and exhibits according to ACCME standards*

*Loyola University Medical Center, as a not-for-profit entity, does not allow vendors or exhibits on-site during CME events (PS 11)

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Step IV: Assessing the Impact of Your Activity
You began the process of planning your CME activity by exploring the practice gaps relevant to your learners and
choosing a performance area that you wished to address.
You identified the learning needs of your targeted audience related to that clinical problem and then developed the
learning objectives that you wished to focus on in your CME event.
You tailored the learning environment and the educational format of your activity to be the most effective means for
participants to learn what they needed.
You put on your event, meeting or conference and hopefully it all goes successfully!
But at this point you really don't know whether you've accomplished your goal.
You still have a responsibility to evaluate the impact of your activity.
The goal is to see whether you enhanced the learners confidence or competence, changed their practice behaviors, or impacted
health outcomes in their patient populations.
The Office of CME at Stritch works with you to gather data related to these types of outcomes, in order to get information on the impact
of your activity.

This process fulfills the Plan, Do, Study, Act cycle espoused by Deming et al. that should govern all activities.

• Plan: You are aware of a practice based problem, and have come up with an educational intervention to help address the problem.

• Do: You put on the educational activity hoping to impart knowledge, change behaviors, improve performance, impact health outcomes.

• Study: You collect information to analyze whether you were successful or not.

• Act: Applying what you have learned from your analysis, you prepare to enter into a new planning phase intent on addressing the residual gaps in the future.
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Self Assessment Test

The driving force of CME is which of the following

a. Providing Docs with vactions
b. Matching performance with expected practice
c. Making money for your medical school

Correct Answer is...B.

We thank you for taking the time to learn what we believe is relevant for you know as a CME Course Director...
[Please proceed to the final page to check your grasp of this material]

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Conclusion:

Whew, this was most challenging, given the short amount of time for completion and my ignorance in creating lesson plans and designing a blog!! Sorry, it's not more eye-appealing. Hopefully, it's somewhere in the ballpark of the stated assignment. Sigh...