“Green” approach will make it easier to get credits

Last year, the Academy’s Council on Education approved a new policy requiring participants in courses with continuing medical education (CME) credits to complete and submit a course evaluation form to receive the credits.

Beginning next month, the Academy’s CME Courses Committee will implement a new approach to collecting evaluation information from course participants by replacing the traditional paper-based evaluation form with an online data collection survey.

“Our goal is to make it easier for members to complete course evaluations while implementing a ‘green’ approach,” said Gerald R. Williams Jr., MD, the new chair of the CME Courses Committee. “Course participants will be able to complete the evaluation survey online within 7 days after the course, rather than completing a multipage paper form at the conclusion of the course.”

Course participants will be able to complete the survey online each day of the course or complete the entire survey after the course. The course syllabus will include information on completing the online survey and a reminder e-mail with a link to the survey will be sent to all course participants following the course.

“Several other medical and orthopaedic specialty societies have adopted this approach to collecting course participant evaluation data,” noted Dr. Williams. In addition, he reported that, for selected courses, participants will have a choice of syllabus formats, either print or electronic (disc-based).

Howard Mevis is director of the AAOS department of electronic media, evaluations, course operations, and practice management group. He can be reached at mevis@aaos.org