Orientation for Planners
Orientation to Faculty Planning of Certified Continuing Medical Education (CME) Activities at Stanford
- The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) requires that educational activities must be the product of a well documented planning process.
- Planning cannot be delegated to administrative staff. Only faculty possess the specialized medical knowledge needed to design CME curricula.
- CME curricula are intended to address professional practice gaps of physicians. The practice gap is defined as the delta between current and best practice.
- In the past the straightforward goal of CME was to impart knowledge. The ACCME no longer considers this sufficient. Today curricula must be designed to improve competence (defined as knowledge with a strategy to utilize it), performance and/or patient outcomes.
Tools Used for Identification of Professional Practice Gaps: (each educational subject in a
certified CME activity must be related to one of more of the following)
- National practice standards
- Maintenance of certification (e.g. core competencies)
- Need for practice improvement identified by:
- Learners (e.g. by group survey or by request from individual practitioners)
- Specialists often recognize areas of suboptimal practice among non-specialists
who manage patients in their area of specialization
- Observed outcome trends - Issues arising from departmental quality of care or patient safety monitoring
- Top areas of litigation
- Emerging research and technology of clinical relevance
- Policy, legal, or ethical considerations with implications for medical practice
- Practice management aspects which affect patient care
CME Planning Involves These Tasks:
- Identify the practice gaps and the sources of the gaps using one of the tools listed above.
- Describe how your activity will address the practice gaps
(i.e. improve competence, performance and/or patient outcome). - Select a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of your CME activity.
Stanford CME staff are experts and will guide you through the process!
Stanford Center for CME, 6/05/09
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