Last week, Dr. Andy Hicken attended the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions’ annual conference. This year’s conference focused on the value of continuing education for healthcare providers. The theme of workshops, discussions and presentations revolved around how continuing education leads to improvement in the work and patient care of health professionals; ultimately leading to improved population health.
Web Courseworks is an advocate for performance improvement, as well as continuing education. These two education tools are necessary for overall improvement in patient and population health. As a provider of continuing education for health professionals, we have taken a close look at population health and how it relates to continuing education and performance improvement.
The conference was full of opportunities for attendees to listen to presentations on continuing education. From “CME 101”, to “Growing a Virtual CE Program with Limited Resources,” the value of pursuing continuing education, and creating a mentality of lifelong learning in healthcare professions, was a key takeaway from this conference. One of the Alliance discussions was led by a panel consisting of experts on association education and learning platforms. The panel consisted of Lisa Cohen, Director of Education and Professional Development at the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, Celisa Steele, Co-Founder of Tagoras, Pam Beaton, Senior Manager of American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, John Everson, Director of Online Education at American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and Brain Thompson, Director of Education and Training at the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. They discussed, “Demonstrating the Value of an LMS: A Basic Introduction to Learning Management Systems from a CEhp Perspective.”
The presentation was geared towards health professionals who are at the beginning stages of deciding whether to adopt a Learning Management System (LMS) into their personal or association’s continuing education needs. The panelists covered the introductory question of, “what is an LMS,” in greater detail due to most information on LMSes being geared toward corporations and HR training, and not toward medical professionals. The scope of the discussion covered everything from the definition of what a learning management system is and how it is used, to how to begin the process of selecting an LMS. The entire panel has extensive backgrounds with Learning Management Systems and learning technology. Cohen, Beaton, Everson and Thompson serve as leaders of their association’s education and development department; and therefore, play an essential role of integrating their LMS into their association and membership base. Steele plays an outside role to associations as she conducts in-depth research in the learning and education industry, and also consults for associations and societies looking to purchase learning technology.
The 42nd Alliance annual conference was held in San Francisco, January 26-29.
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