The Albert J. Finestone, MD Office for Continuing Medical Education - Mission
Purpose
The Albert J. Finestone, MD Office for Continuing Medical Education (CME) is committed to achieving excellence in continuing medical education through state, national, and international activities that are built on a platform of evidenced-based medicine and adult learning principles. The Lewis Katz School of Medicine Office for CME provides continuing professional development for physicians both internal and external to Temple by developing high quality programs that are designed to enhance practice performance and have a positive impact upon patient care.
Content Areas
The content areas presented are broad and diverse and cover virtually all specialties within medicine. The CME Office fosters relationships with subspecialty groups which expand our programmatic offerings. All content presented has a strong foundation in the latest evidence-based scientific information available at the time of the program.
Target Audience
Our target audience is represented by health care providers from both inside and outside the Temple University Health System. Participants represent academic, hospital, and office-based health professionals in a variety of practice settings. Characteristics of potential participants are defined by geography, type of practice, specialty, and age. In addition, they are identified by gaps in knowledge levels, attitudes and skills or mandated, recommended or prescribed curricula.
Type of Activities
Our activities include a variety of educational formats including traditional lectures, interactive sessions, hands-on experiences, and both live and asynchronous online teaching. Active learning methods are emphasized where possible. Newer educational technologies and teaching modalities will be explored as they become available.
Expected Results
There are three types of expected results that are at the core of our CME mission. They are: Educational Results, Administrative Results, and Patient Outcomes Results.
Educational Results: All educational activities are evaluated in both a formative and summative way with the intention of meeting the needs of the participants. Each participant is expected to provide evaluative feedback regarding a programʼs stated objectives and the impact of the program on the participantʼs knowledge, skills, attitudes, and patient care.
Administrative Results: The CME Office is responsible for developing, executing, and improving its educational programming. We will use our performance monitoring tools and learning management system to systematically review all programming for quality and compliance with ACCME and federal guidelines.
Patient Outcomes Results: Quality improvement in patient care must be achieved by stimulating changes in physiciansʼ competence, performance, and patient outcomes. They will be achieved as follows:
- Changes in physiciansʼ competence: Whenever possible, the CME Office will measure changes in physiciansʼ competence through knowledge-based testing of the specific content presented during the educational activity.
- Changes in physiciansʼ performance: Whenever possible, the CME Office will measure changes in physiciansʼ performance by soliciting perceptual data and/or practice performance data that demonstrate changes in behavior.
- Changes in patient outcomes: Whenever possible, the CME Office will partner with sources of genuine clinical data to link patient outcome measures to educational interventions which we have developed and presented.
We are also challenging ourselves to pursue more CME related research and partner with departments and organizations that study physician performance and quality improvement in order to implement more sophisticated outcome analyses of our CME programs.
Accreditation Statement
The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to sponsor continuing medical education for physicians.