3 Exciting Ideas and Innovations in Continuing Professional Education
Wouldn’t it be interesting to attend a continuing medical education (CME) meeting where patients contributed to content development?
Or what about an interactive game that helps learners understand the regulations that govern their profession?
Well, both concepts could be coming to a continuing education (CE) activity near you! We’re always scouring the news to find out what’s going on in the CE world, and those are just a couple of exciting developments that appeared on our ticker as of late. Here’s a closer look at both, plus one more development that should be welcome news for CME learners.
1. Patient-Centric CME Activities
According to a recent MeetingsNet article, an initiative called RAPID CME, first launched in 2007 in an effort to help primary care physicians identify patients who have rheumatoid arthritis (RA), has evolved to include an extraordinary level of patient contributions to CME content. Nowadays, patients’ stories aren’t just the subject of RAPID CME content – the patients are the authors, too.
Bringing so much patient input to the CME experience achieves two things:
- Helps professional learners understand the patient experience: For example, patients helped physician-presenters design an RA glove that learners could use to understand what it’s like to live with the disease. Patients also participated in live symposia and answered questions from learners.
- Opportunities for hands-on diagnosis: Learners asked patients questions that helped them understand how to identify signs of RA and recommend appropriate treatments.
By all indications, this new approach to content development has been a success. The RAPID CME initiative is using it across a variety of activity types, including online enduring materials, journals, and live grand rounds.
2. Games aim to increase learner engagement
One Seattle startup is breathing new life into continuing education for real estate professionals, and they’re doing it with games.
So far, the startup has produced simulations that prompt real estate agents to find new clients, negotiate home prices, and market their services. For an “advancing through one’s career” effect, agents begin their work in a dark basement and eventually work their way up to a swanky downtown office.
At present, the game is aimed exclusively at the real estate profession. But as we saw last year, education providers focused on other professions are starting to experiment with interactive content, too.
It could just be a matter of time…
3. ABIM and ACCME offer a new CME search tool
Pretty soon, CME learners will have an easier time identifying relevant learning opportunities. The ACCME and ABIM have just announced the release of CME Finder, which help learners find CME activities via the web.
Maybe they took a cue from Rievent’s CE Catalog and Events Calendar?
Anyway, learners who complete an activity also benefit from having their information sent directly to ABIM. There seems to be a concerted effort afoot to make the process smoother for learners, which is a good thing.
The fact that CME Finder should make it easy for learners to zero in on opportunities for maintenance of certification (MOC) credit is also a nice perk.
CE should be hassle-free and, at the very least, interesting.
The “hassle-free” part is something we’re always striving for at Rievent. It sits at the heart of what we do. But how learners perceive their experience is the provider’s purview. At the very least, content should be interesting. Learners should walk away feeling like it was relevant to their day-to-day practice.
At best, though, content is engaging and leads to better outcomes – not just for learners, but for the people whose lives they impact. For physicians, those people are patients. For real estate agents, they’re buyers and sellers. For CPAs, they’re small business owners. And so on.
That being the case, these recent developments are a step in the right direction.