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Small continuing education for the health professions (CEHP) teams are not uncommon. In fact, in 2020, the Alliance Research Committee published the results of their survey of Alliance members regarding the most significant barriers they face in their role. Fifty-six percent of the 464 respondents reported staffing as a significant barrier. If you are one of the many hundreds of us struggling with inadequate staffing, odds are you are spread thin, doing a lot with a little and perhaps a little burned out or unfulfilled. When necessity forces you to spend your time simply ensuring the bare minimum is covered, it can lead to feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction which, in turn, can bring up questions like:

• Am I making a difference?
• Am I helping to provide education that produces meaningful learning?
• Are providers truly walking away from our continuing medical education (CME) activities with knowledge and competence that will improve their performance in their professional practice?  

For myself, I am grateful to say, the answer to each of these questions is yes. One of the strategies I have discovered that helps ensure our healthcare system’s CME program remains robust and impactful is leveraging underused CME activities. Specifically, there are three categories of CME activities I have found to be low effort to set up and maintain, but prove to have a high impact:

• Journal CME/CE
• Peer-review Committees
• Performance Improvement-Continuing Medical Education (PI-CME)

Let’s take a closer look at each of these categories. I will share the processes and templates that have enabled me to increase the availability of these activities for our physicians.

Journal CME/CE

The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) defines journal-based CME/CE as an activity in which a learner reads a peer-reviewed journal article, reflects on it and answers a few questions about the content. This activity promotes self-directed learning and critical thinking and is particularly helpful for distributing new evidence-based practice guidelines within specialties.

The process for setting up a journal CME activity looks like this:

• A practice gap is identified. Example: Pediatricians do not have an awareness of the new evidence-based guidelines for sepsis treatment in infants.
• The Pediatric Medical Director identifies the peer-reviewed journal article where these new guidelines are detailed.
• Having read the article himself, the medical director identifies two or three learning objectives and creates a few post-test questions.
• I set up the post-test using our credit management system, eeds™.

  What is eeds™?

  eeds™ (electronic education documentation system) is an online, cloud-based CE tracking system for healthcare professionals. eeds™ is a closed-loop, paperless system that allows users to claim credit and attendance for CE activities with a unique 6-character code. Once they have completed the required evaluation, the credit posts instantly to their personal account. For more information, visit eeds.com.

  However, any method of surveying/testing will work.
• The medical director distributes the article and a flyer detailing the CME activity information.

Check out an example of the flyer here.

This is distributed to medical staff who are encouraged to read the article, regardless of whether it is part of an accredited CME activity. The added benefit of the CME credit can provide more incentive to read the article, thereby increasing the possibility of implementing evidence-based research into professional practice. 

Peer-review Committees

This type of activity is a Joint Commission mandate for hospitals to maintain their accreditation and is separate from case conferences or morbidity and mortality meetings. A peer-review committee, in this context, is a process whereby physicians evaluate the quality of their colleagues’ work to ensure prevailing standards of care are being met. While these do not qualify for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™, they do qualify for AMA PRA Category 2 Credit™.

Per the state of Michigan’s continuing education requirements, physicians may claim a maximum of 18 hours of Category 2 CME credit through participation in a “peer review committee dealing with quality of patient care as it relates to the practice of medicine.”

Physicians are not issued certificates that state they have been awarded AMA PRA Category 2 Credit™. This credit is self-claimed and self-documented by physicians. While each physician is responsible for maintaining a record of their AMA PRA Category 2 Credit™, we have set up an efficient process for these committees with a templated letter to show proof of the hours spent for each physician.

View the letter template here.

Performance Improvement-Continuing Medical Education (PI-CME)

PI-CME can initially feel overwhelming. Don’t panic. Once you have a reliable templated structure for each phase in the project, this becomes a plug-and-play activity with the highest return on your investment. The potential to obtain a total of 20 CME credits for performance improvement work is a fantastic incentive for participation and engagement.

Many physicians and interdisciplinary teams are already doing performance improvement work without the prescribed structure of PI-CME – simply taking the Plan, Do, Study, Act model from process improvement and documenting it in specific ways to meet standards of accredited education. PI-CME activities consist of three main stages, as outlined below:

• Stage A- 5 Credits: Learning from current practice
• Stage B- 5 Credits: Learning from application of PI to patient care
• Stage C- 5 Credits: Learning from evaluation of performance improvement effort
• 5 additional credits for completing all in sequence.

Learners can earn 5 credits for each stage of the project, with an additional 5 credits available if they complete all three in sequence. After you document the practice gap through your standard CME application/intake process, use one simplified template for each stage of the project. Here’s the template I use.

View an example of a completed template here.

Conclusion

You will notice each of these CME activity categories has something in common – it is work physicians are doing anyway. Providing CME/CE credits for work clinicians are already doing is highly impactful and consistently appreciated by those clinicians. Historically, CEHP office processes have been time-consuming and paperwork-heavy. Much of these traditional processes can be simplified, however. My hope is that the processes and templates I have shared here can be translated into an efficient process of your own and assist you in supporting the professional practices of clinicians with more ease.

The use of GenerativeAI is acceptable for Almanac publications. GenAI was used in creating the title only. The article itself was written entirely without AI contribution.

Katie West, M.S.N., R.N., brings over a decade of nursing expertise to her role in continuing medical education (CME). With a diverse background that includes complex pediatric home care and inpatient cardiac/telemetry care, West has honed her skills in various high-stakes environments. Since 2019, she has focused her talents on CME, earning her M.S.N. in Education in 2021. Her passion for writing and instructional design shines through in her ability to distill complex topics into clear, easily understood information. She is committed to supporting the professional development of healthcare providers through convenient and effective learning experiences.