Activity Development
As an ACCME and ACPE accredited provider of continuing medical and pharmacy education, Center demonstrates ability to develop and evaluate effective educational programs that target identified knowledge gaps amongst physicians, pharmacists, and all allied healthcare professionals.
Center for Independent Healthcare Education (Center) develops scientifically sound, fair balanced, competency-based, and evidence-based educational activities for the healthcare team that enhance the quality of care of patients. To achieve this objective, Center follows a methodological approach to understanding the educational need of the healthcare team in any therapeutic area and how this need can be best addressed.
Conducting Needs Assessment
The Needs Assessment provides a rationale for why an educational activity should be planned for a specific audience, such as physicians, pharmacists, or nurses. Center strives to develop a strong Needs Assessment utilizing multiple resources in order to create such activities. Needs Assessment begins with review of the literature and expert interviews. Surveys of target audiences are conducted and evaluations from previous CME/CE activities analyzed. This helps identify knowledge gaps, which must be “filled” in order to better patient outcomes.
In fact, Center was recognized with Exemplary Compliance by ACCME for our educational planning and evaluation ability to specifically identify needs assessments from multiple sources.
Developing Actionable Learning Objectives
Based on the Needs Assessment, specific learning objectives are developed, that are actionable and measureable in order to improve patient care.
Designing the Educational Format
To ensure that our educational programs are efficient and effective in filling the identified knowledge gap and meeting the learning objectives, we apply Adult Learning Principles in our planning and content development process.
The target audience and the specific nature of the education to be imparted are considerations that determine the best format for the activity, whether it should be short audiofiles through Podcasts, online interactive case studies, a Clinical Jeopardy workshop format for a live activity, or question and answer approach presented as an easy to use monograph.
Additionally, Center strives to reinforce learning through repetition. This is done by employing various home study formats following all live activities.
Center always makes an effort to reach as many healthcare professionals as possible with the information that is current and clinically relevant. This is done by designing an activity that translates common learning into what it means for each member of the multidisciplinary healthcare team providing care for patients.
Selecting Faculty
Center considers the following criteria for selecting and inviting faculty. These include
- Professional stature and recognition at the national and international level
- Affiliations and activities with professional societies
- Publication records and editorial appointments
- Balance of research interests with clinical experience
- Good presentation skills
- Prior participation in similar programs or initiatives