Although requirements vary for each health profession, in order to maintain licensure, most require some sort of continuing education (CE) to demonstrate competency and insure quality of care.
Health professionals typically need to take time away from work and personal obligations to obtain continuing education credits, which means meeting these requirements can be fraught with challenging barriers. This is especially true for those practicing medicine in rural communities where opportunities can be very limited. Finding the time to attend educational events is problematic and is compounded by adding more time and expense for traveling to such events, particularly in a rural setting where backup support can be inadequate.
Since the University of Arizona Medical Center (UAMC) is a teaching hospital, the Arizona Telemedicine Program is in an exceptionally unique position to support health professionals at telemedicine member sites achieve their objectives. The program provides a wide variety of educational opportunities via the content provided to students pursuing a career in health care.
Grand Rounds
Since 1998, the Arizona Telemedicine Program has offered educational videoconferences via grand rounds in medicine, surgery, advances in aging, psychiatry, nursing, informatics, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology, most of which provide continuing medical education (CME) and/or CE credits. Theses weekly and monthly educational events attract participants from physicians and nurses to lay audiences, technicians and CEO’s to name a few.
Clinical Care Events
In addition to the grand rounds, we also offer our own Clinical Care Conference Series, which is developed exclusively for the Arizona Telemedicine Program site participants. The conference series enables the telemedicine program to address imminent health concerns in the community.
Topics are derived from an annual survey sent to the sites. Past topics have included:
- Instructing general practitioners on how to do an orthopedic assessment
- Valley fever
- Working with patients with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Culturally appropriate care for Native Americans
- Successfully identifying and referring patients for service dogs
The Clinical Care events also offer the opportunity for telemedicine site physicians to present on topics of interest in their communities. Additionally, we have the ability to access broadcasts sent out over the UA satellite and then downlink those broadcasts to our telemedicine sites via our own network. This allows us to provide the latest updates in medicine from providers such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Heart Association, and American Diabetes Association, to name a few.
Receiving Continuing Education Credits
If your organization is a member of our network and you are interested in participating in a live interactive videoconference to receive your educational content, please visit our schedule online.
If you do not have access to a videoconference room, you can participate live via web streaming. Visit the streaming site at http://streaming.biocom.arizona.edu/home/ and join the educational event a few minutes before the start time.
For more information, please feel free to contact me at tskinner@telemedicine.arizona.edu or 520-626-6103.
