Vivacity Consulting

Bringing energy and experience to your CME activity

CME Consultant Musings: If I Ruled the World

By

Caution: CME Consultant at Work

If I ruled the world, educational activity objectives would be measurable every time. The word “understand” would be outlawed.

If I ruled the world, disclosure forms would be turned in 2 weeks BEFORE the deadline, completely filled out, signed and dated.

If I ruled the world, all of my activity data would batch upload into PARS at the ACCME the first time.

If I ruled the world, hospital IT departments would seamlessly allow emails about upcoming CME activities to flow, and would allow CME staff to participate in webinars using any webinar software the vendor suggests.

If I ruled the world, every ACCME Progress Report and IMQ Interim Report issued would also come with a box of See’s Candy dark chocolate covered mint patties. (That’s only fair.)

If I ruled the world, every Quality Department in the hospital would talk to the staff in the Medical Education office and figure out how they could help each other reach their goals.

If I ruled the world, the public would understand that continuing medical education is NOT a vehicle to get more money into doctor’s pockets but instead the best possible way to ensure health professionals are providing best-practice, evidence-based care to them and their loved ones.

Whoops, there’s that word understand. I guess I would outlaw that word for everyone but me, if I ruled the world!

(Musing: A product of contemplation; a thought.)

Can CME Make You Happy?

By

Or, Is It Possible to Follow CME Rules/Regulations/Criteria and Still Be Happy?

Often, new clients come to me when they are drastically unhappy. Their organization has received a Progress Report or Interim Report or even a Probation decision, and they don’t know what to do. Or they have had a staff member leave and they have to do the job now. Or they are a physician struggling to apply the CME criteria to their upcoming educational activity.

So a big part of my job is to help these very unhappy people find the fun in the challenges facing them.

“Fun?!” you may say, “Where’s the fun?” I once had an otolaryngologist say to me, “You really love this. I can tell. You love it ….” Implying that HE did not.

Perhaps my love of continuing medical education is a bit over the top, but I have found a few tricks over the years which help on those down days or weeks. You can do this as well. Here’s some ideas to turn the perceived burden of CME into an opportunity to be happy:

1. List your successes. Did you make a change to your evaluation form that helped you collect better data? Did you find an interesting journal article that describes a best practice? Did a physician provide an excellent practice gap on their CME activity request application? Research shows that writing down small positive memories enhances your mood, and this is as true in work life as in personal life.

2. Share your list with others. Incorporate successes into your Medical Education Committee agenda. Solicit successes from your Chairs and highlight them in your newsletter.  See this blog post about how one of my clients made Criterion 6 useful.

3. Smile. People react to positively to body language, and I have found this is true even when they cannot see you. Smile when you are talking, even on the phone, and you will be amazed at the change.

4. Remember that you are on a continuum. The ACCME rewards programs for growth and improvement. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Track your successes and set goals for the future.

If you want to hear an amazing talk about Happiness, listen to Nataly Kogan’s TedXBoston talk here. Also, I would recommend Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project, and her blog on the same subject.

(Credit to http://terriblycute.com/ for the dog photo!) 

 

 

 

 

ACCME’s Criterion 6: How We Made This Useful

By

ACCME’s Criterion 6: Not all Criteria Are Made the Same

It’s true. All of the criteria are important, but some are MORE IMPORTANT THAN OTHERS. Right? We all know this. Identifying gaps and needs is very important. Ensuring independence from commercial interests is very important. Criterion 6 is not at the top of the totem pole of importance.

However, one of my clients, SAGES, has embraced Criterion 6 in a pretty neat way to make it useful in the planning process (see below). Every year, each session of the Annual Meeting is linked to one or more “Physician Competencies.” We track this and then highlight for the next year’s Program Committee areas which may have been under-emphasized in previous years. Not all competencies are relevant to this large specialty societies’ annual meeting – but some are.

In this way, lowly Criterion 6 becomes not just required for compliance, but also provides insight into the CME program and therefore IT’S ACTUALLY HELPFUL! Which, of course, is the ultimate goal of the CME process.

Criterion 6

Example of ACCME’s Criterion 6 Used in Planning

Wait a Minute: Rethinking the ACCME Accreditation Revisions

By

Rethinking the ACCME Accreditation Proposed Revisions

Today, I held a webmeeting with three of the smartest, most enthusiastic, ready-for-anything physician volunteers you can imagine.  We were conducting the overall mission assessment required by ACCME Accreditation Criterion 12 as the first step in a multi-month reaccreditation process. And it struck me.  If we eliminate C14 & 15, some of their motivation to get these changes accomplished might be reduced.  They are fired up to get these changes in place now so that we can measure the results.  Part of their enthusiasm stems from their core belief in the CME process, part of their enthusiasm is justifiably self-serving (they want to write a manuscript which may help them get promoted), but part of their enthusiasm, I really believe, comes from the fact that IT’S REQUIRED.  It’s human nature to respond to a deadline, and they know theirs is April 2014.

Maybe eliminating C14 & C15 might not be such a great idea.

ACCME reports that in the November 2012 cohort, 20-30% of providers were non-compliant with C15.  This could be a matter of timing (they didn’t start evaluating their program early enough to make changes and measure the effect.)  But it could also be because they missed the point.

C15 states, “The provider demonstrates that the impacts of program improvements, that are required to improve on the provider’s ability to meet the CME mission, are measured.” Without this, might we inadvertently stall the cycle of continuous improvement?

If we need to rethink this, what about the rest of the proposed changes?

I know that my job is easier when the rules are explicit – and Dr. Kopelow told us on the May 23, 2013 provider webinar that this is true for everyone. My smart, enthusiastic, BUSY physician volunteers would have been baffled if I tried to convince them that a mission statement should include anything more than our expected results … because “it doesn’t say so in the rules.” To me, it makes sense that we will continue to describe our purpose, content areas, target audience and type of activities in the mission statement, but to the person who doesn’t think about CME everyday, this might seem like a massive waste of time.

So, maybe ACCME Accreditation Criterion 1 should be left alone as well.

What do you think?  Make sure you submit your comments to the ACCME by July 2nd!

ACCME changes review

ACCME accreditation revisions – provider feedback due July 2nd!