The Alliance Career Pathways Series (CPS) is designed for early career professionals in the field of healthcare CPD. CPS 201: Designing and Managing a CPD Program concluded second of two installments on Tuesday, June 7. Course Moderator Heather Ranels, MA, MS, CHCP, provided key takeaways from the second installment of CPS 201. Interested in learning more? Register for the recording of both parts of the workshop.  

Session 1: Supporting a CPD Program
Presenters: Amanda Kaczerski and Andrea Zimmerman
Focus: From a high-level, understand and manage financial resources.

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the factors involved in creating program and activity level budgets.
2. Describe common sources of revenue for CPD programs and their differing needs.

In this session, Amanda and Andrea guided learners to think about the concept of developing a budget along with creating and interpreting budgets and expenses at the activity level. They introduced a “Snapshot Assessment of Program’s Financial Considerations” as a tool to identify sources of income. This included identifying your stakeholders and understanding internal and external funding sources (registration fees, commercial or foundation grant support, exhibits, sponsors, etc.). Possible expenses and operating cost were also covered and learners were given a chance to create a budget for an activity.

The case discussions during the breakout activities emphasized the importance of breaking out costs into broad budget lines. It was interesting to see how learners tailored the line items based on their prior knowledge and experience. The learners were challenged to think out of the box to explore alternative ways to lump costs and to justify them. Overall, the session was geared towards increasing learner’s knowledge in asking the appropriate budget questions, sources of revenue and exploring new ways to source funding when situations arise.

Session 2: Data Collection, Analysis and Application
Presenters: Heather Ranels and Amanda Kaczerski
Focus: From a high-level perspective, collect, analyze and apply data to their CPD activities and program.

Learning Objectives

1. Select assessment methods and tools appropriate to the needs of your learners or requirements of your stakeholders.
2. Draw conclusions regarding the extent to which the program is successful in achieving its goals, objectives and desired outcomes.

During the last segment of the workshop, Heather and Amanda reviewed various techniques to use to measure data and walked learners through a progressive case series to understand how and when to use each technique. Each case presented a viewpoint of a different stakeholder who would require different data sets for an ongoing activity. With each scenario, the question for the data points was “Did we achieve our goal?” The session concluded with the reminder that data analysis and application is a continuous cycle with the opportunity to reflect, learn, transform or do it again as a result of the work of we are doing.

The Alliance thanks all those involved in the success of Career Pathways Series 201: Debbie Platek (Course Director) and Faculty — Raja Akunuru, Samantha Cribari-Starr, Amanda Kaczerski, Heather Ranels, Nicole Spino and Andrea Zimmerman.

Learn more and register now to access the recordings, and look forward to more CPS installments coming soon.