Emergency Medicine Continuing Education Forum
CPD Accreditation
Currently provided by a panel with a total of around 450 years of consultant experience!
CPD Accreditation
As of May, 2017, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine is no longer involved in accreditation of CPD for EMCEF or for other events other than the College's own. Extracts from the announcement are reproduced here:
... Revised guidance from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges emphasises that the focus of CPD should be on its quality and reflection of its impact on a doctor’s practice, rather than the amount of time spent on the activity and that the responsibility for identifying CPD requirements rests with the individual and should be based on their personal areas of practice and personal development plan agreed at their annual appraisal... Although one 'CPD credit' will normally equate to one hour of educational activity, the amount of educational activity obtained from a specific event may vary between individuals depending on an individual’s specific learning outcomes. For this reason, RCEM will no longer be awarding CPD points or credits to external CPD events... RCEM is unable to implement an alternative 'accreditation' process for the educational content of external events due to the substantial resources required to develop a robust quality assurance process...
Considering its importance, EMCEF had been preparing for some time to take on the responsibility of quality assurance. Some initial steps involved collecting feedback on lectures and processing it through an analysis tool that indicates which lectures and speakers are of a suitable standard. It also distinguishes feedback from consultants and accords it a higher weighting. Here, again, I would like to acknowledge the additional strain I have been putting on all those who have attended EMCEF events to spend their time providing comprehensive feedback on the sessions they have attended.
EMCEF has taken over the CPD accreditation process for its own events and for those being run by others. For this purpose, an expert panel called EMCEF100 has been established, with panellists selected according to the following criteria:
- Consultants with over 10 years of consultant experience
- Either presented at EMCEF with positive feedback, OR, have certificates of attending at least 20 hours of EMCEF lectures in the preceding 3 years
The reason behind the "100" in the name is that this panel will provide, from among its members, over a century of emergency medicine consultant time to back up its decisions. The current count of the number of years of consultant experience behind EMCEF100 decisions is shown at the top of this page.
The accreditation process is as follows:
- The panel receives the event programme, a summary of previous feedback for any returning speakers, and a short paragraph on any new speaker, indicating why he/she should be regarded as an expert on the topic of his/her presentation and/or any other reason why the presentation should be worth listening to
- The panel then decides whether a provisional accreditation certificate should be issued; votes from consultants with at least a century of consultant experience among them are required as a minimum
- A summary of feedback is sent to the panel some time after event and the panel then confirms the accreditation and/or provides suggestions for improvement
Panel members are rewarded for their efforts. Yes, even beyond the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing how helpful they have been. Initially, rewards are as follows:
- Free entry to EMCEF events
- The option of nominating up to 3 senior middle-grade colleagues for free places, instead of the usual one
- Points (yup, your eyes are not deceiving you - "EMCEF Miles"): 2 points for voting on provisional accreditation; 1 point for each hour of attendance
- EMCEF partially/fully sponsors panellists with sufficient points to attend other CPD events (see below)
EMCEF100 accepts applications from non-EMCEF CPD events to accredit them, now that the College no longer offers this service. The process mirrors the one used for EMCEF's own events. We negotiate cost-price places for panel members to attend selected events and confirm that these are worthy of accreditation. These cost-price places are then paid for by EMCEF.
If you have an event in need of accreditation, please make contact...
... Revised guidance from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges emphasises that the focus of CPD should be on its quality and reflection of its impact on a doctor’s practice, rather than the amount of time spent on the activity and that the responsibility for identifying CPD requirements rests with the individual and should be based on their personal areas of practice and personal development plan agreed at their annual appraisal... Although one 'CPD credit' will normally equate to one hour of educational activity, the amount of educational activity obtained from a specific event may vary between individuals depending on an individual’s specific learning outcomes. For this reason, RCEM will no longer be awarding CPD points or credits to external CPD events... RCEM is unable to implement an alternative 'accreditation' process for the educational content of external events due to the substantial resources required to develop a robust quality assurance process...
Considering its importance, EMCEF had been preparing for some time to take on the responsibility of quality assurance. Some initial steps involved collecting feedback on lectures and processing it through an analysis tool that indicates which lectures and speakers are of a suitable standard. It also distinguishes feedback from consultants and accords it a higher weighting. Here, again, I would like to acknowledge the additional strain I have been putting on all those who have attended EMCEF events to spend their time providing comprehensive feedback on the sessions they have attended.
EMCEF has taken over the CPD accreditation process for its own events and for those being run by others. For this purpose, an expert panel called EMCEF100 has been established, with panellists selected according to the following criteria:
- Consultants with over 10 years of consultant experience
- Either presented at EMCEF with positive feedback, OR, have certificates of attending at least 20 hours of EMCEF lectures in the preceding 3 years
The reason behind the "100" in the name is that this panel will provide, from among its members, over a century of emergency medicine consultant time to back up its decisions. The current count of the number of years of consultant experience behind EMCEF100 decisions is shown at the top of this page.
The accreditation process is as follows:
- The panel receives the event programme, a summary of previous feedback for any returning speakers, and a short paragraph on any new speaker, indicating why he/she should be regarded as an expert on the topic of his/her presentation and/or any other reason why the presentation should be worth listening to
- The panel then decides whether a provisional accreditation certificate should be issued; votes from consultants with at least a century of consultant experience among them are required as a minimum
- A summary of feedback is sent to the panel some time after event and the panel then confirms the accreditation and/or provides suggestions for improvement
Panel members are rewarded for their efforts. Yes, even beyond the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing how helpful they have been. Initially, rewards are as follows:
- Free entry to EMCEF events
- The option of nominating up to 3 senior middle-grade colleagues for free places, instead of the usual one
- Points (yup, your eyes are not deceiving you - "EMCEF Miles"): 2 points for voting on provisional accreditation; 1 point for each hour of attendance
- EMCEF partially/fully sponsors panellists with sufficient points to attend other CPD events (see below)
EMCEF100 accepts applications from non-EMCEF CPD events to accredit them, now that the College no longer offers this service. The process mirrors the one used for EMCEF's own events. We negotiate cost-price places for panel members to attend selected events and confirm that these are worthy of accreditation. These cost-price places are then paid for by EMCEF.
If you have an event in need of accreditation, please make contact...