Vivacity Consulting

Bringing energy and experience to your CME activity

Using Data to Improve Medical Education

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A Case-Study: Using Data From Participant Evaluations

When the ACCME came out with the new Criteria (back in the 2000s!), many of us from  non-hospital-based organizations struggled to understand how to incorporate the concept of using data into our planning process. I remember whining a lot. “We’re a specialty society. We don’t have patient data!”  Not only that but, “we only see our attendees one time a year!”

Flash forward 7 years. The SAGES Continuing Medical Education Committee is pleased to announce the publication of the article entitled, “Evolution of practice gaps in gastrointestinal and endoscopic surgery: 2012 report from the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) Continuing Education Committee.” In this article, we describe the process by which we have collected data from our attendees through post-activity surveys, analyzed this data by “Learning Themes,” and then identified potential practice gaps which have or may be addressed at future educational activities.

If you have a subscription, you can access the article here:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00464-013-3263-2

I just read that some journal publishers are getting tougher about copyright violations, so message me if you would like me to send you a “draft” version of the paper. I’ll present a summary of this work during CMEPALOOZA, a web-conference being held March 20, 2014.

And congrats to my co-authors who did the bulk of the data work,

  • John T. Paige, MD
  • Timothy M. Farrell, MD
  • Simon Bergman, MD
  • Niazy Selim, MD
  • Alan E. Harzman, MD
  • Yumi Hori,
  • Jason Levine,
  • Daniel J. Scott, MD

Turns out specialty societies actually do have the ability to collect valuable data, and there are ways of using this data to, dare I say, improve the education delivered.

Can CME Make You Happy?

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Or, Is It Possible to Follow CME Rules/Regulations/Criteria and Still Be Happy?

Often, new clients come to me when they are drastically unhappy. Their organization has received a Progress Report or Interim Report or even a Probation decision, and they don’t know what to do. Or they have had a staff member leave and they have to do the job now. Or they are a physician struggling to apply the CME criteria to their upcoming educational activity.

So a big part of my job is to help these very unhappy people find the fun in the challenges facing them.

“Fun?!” you may say, “Where’s the fun?” I once had an otolaryngologist say to me, “You really love this. I can tell. You love it ….” Implying that HE did not.

Perhaps my love of continuing medical education is a bit over the top, but I have found a few tricks over the years which help on those down days or weeks. You can do this as well. Here’s some ideas to turn the perceived burden of CME into an opportunity to be happy:

1. List your successes. Did you make a change to your evaluation form that helped you collect better data? Did you find an interesting journal article that describes a best practice? Did a physician provide an excellent practice gap on their CME activity request application? Research shows that writing down small positive memories enhances your mood, and this is as true in work life as in personal life.

2. Share your list with others. Incorporate successes into your Medical Education Committee agenda. Solicit successes from your Chairs and highlight them in your newsletter.  See this blog post about how one of my clients made Criterion 6 useful.

3. Smile. People react to positively to body language, and I have found this is true even when they cannot see you. Smile when you are talking, even on the phone, and you will be amazed at the change.

4. Remember that you are on a continuum. The ACCME rewards programs for growth and improvement. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Track your successes and set goals for the future.

If you want to hear an amazing talk about Happiness, listen to Nataly Kogan’s TedXBoston talk here. Also, I would recommend Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project, and her blog on the same subject.

(Credit to http://terriblycute.com/ for the dog photo!)Â