Department: Center for Continuing Education
Leadership:
Dennis McNeilly, Psy.D., assistant dean for continuing medical education (CME)
Lois Colburn, executive director
No. of People: 17
Website: www.unmc.edu/cce
Mission:
The mission of the UNMC Center for Continuing Education is to support the continuing professional development of health care professionals within Nebraska, the region and the nation.
History:
The Center for Continuing Education (CCE) has been continuously accredited since the mid-1960s and is among the oldest CME programs in the U.S. The center is currently accredited with commendation through July 2020 by the Accreditation Council for CME. In a typical year, the center certifies more than 700 activities with more than 50,000 interactions with health care providers. The current portfolio of activities includes: live courses, regularly scheduled series (e.g. grand rounds, case conferences), faculty development, outreach, online CME, enduring materials, and American Heart Association Basic Life Support/ Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support/Pediatric Advanced Life Support.
Services Offered:
Assistance with educational design, implementation and evaluation of continuing education activities, identifying sources of funding, registration (including receipt of fees and activity accounting), logistical support for live activities, and web marketing and hosting. CCE also works closely with other accredited providers such as the Nursing Continuing Education in the College of Nursing.
Areas of Focus:
Clinical Medicine:
The clinical medicine team collaborates with campus, local and national partners to provide a broad range of educational activities, with a strong emphasis on documented knowledge gaps, competency and performance improvement. Attendees include regional, national and international health care professionals. These efforts include UNMC/Nebraska Medicine-sponsored local conferences such as those on diabetes and Parkinson’s disease to national programs such as the Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference or satellite programs for Infectious Diseases Week, the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and other national conferences.
Outreach:
In collaboration with College of Medicine faculty, the CCE provides live, telehealth and web CME offerings tailored to meet the needs of Nebraska’s rural health care providers. Activities are made available to all Nebraska critical access hospitals and archived on the web for 24/7 viewing. These activities are developed in close collaboration with Nebraska Medicine.
Emergency Medical Services:
The center operates one of the largest American Heart Association training programs in Nebraska. Courses are offered on campus or at more than 100 locations throughout Nebraska and part of Iowa. In FYI 14-15, the center issued 4,412 BLS cards, 693 PALS cards, 806 ACLS cards, and 3,630 Heart Saver cards, for an overall increase of nearly 35 percent over the previous year. CCE also trained 66 new instructors. During FY 14-15, the center continued to expand the opportunity for health care providers to take advantage of one-on-one skills testing for our AHA offerings. In total 182 health care providers took advantage of this opportunity.
CCE also provides BLS and ACLS training for medical students, residents and faculty as well as physician assistant students in addition to staff of Nebraska Medicine. In FY 16-17, our EMS effort has collaborated with the departments of anesthesiology and emergency medicine for international efforts in Africa and Viet Nam.
Program Highlights:
During 2015-2016, CCE worked with BoardVitals to provide CME credit to a wide variety of question item-banks that help learners prepare for board recertification or simply test their current knowledge. Modules that focus on internal medicine and subspecialties all carry ABIM Part II credit. As a result of the relationship with BoardVitals, these modules are available to all UNMC students, residents and faculty at no charge by simply registering with a UNMC email. The BoardVitals content is found at www.BoardVitals.com
The center also has collaborated with the Enhance Health Network to provide support services for their leadership conference and other educational activities including an upcoming online set of modules on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) and the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).
The center also continues to seek partnerships with external educational organizations that build on UNMC and Nebraska Medicine clinical expertise or support the overall mission of the UNMC campus and Nebraska Medicine. One example of this is a receipt of a grant that brings together the expertise of the Nebraska Medicine heart failure team, one of CCE’s longstanding educational partners, The France Foundation, and the CNE program in the College of Nursing to launch a series of activities on the optimal management of patients with chronic heart failure in the community.