Picture this: Packed live in-person/virtual meeting, lots of questions from the audience, limited time to get to them.

A voice says: “We’re sorry, but we’re out of time. If we didn’t get to your questions, please feel free to write it out, give it to one of our staff, and our faculty will address them after the session. We’ll make their responses available, um, somehow.”

But do they? Not in my experience.

Well, CMEpalooza is not like those other meetings, so when our faculty promises to “get back to everyone” with their thoughts on questions we could not address during our live sessions, they mean it! And so, today, we’re offering you additional thoughts from two of our most popular sessions last week where the questions came flooding in from the live audience:

• We Can Do It! Getting Change-Ready Ahead of the ACCME’s Updates to the Standards for Commercial Support
• Grant Request Rock!

In addition, we also had requests for slides from two other sessions. You can find those below:

• How Should the CE Industry Respond to a Novel Healthcare Crisis?
• Shiny Outcomes People

It is with a heavy heart that Derek and I wished our inaugural CMEpalooza intern Katie a bon voyage this week. Alas, we couldn’t wave from the shore as she boarded a cruise to Puerto Vallarta…

Here are Katie’s parting words for everyone.

Well, folks, all good things must come to an end!

It has been a pleasure sharing my thoughts with you all, and I hope you enjoyed CMEpalooza Spring 2020! I’ve learned a few things on this journey. For instance, Scott is awesome and Derek is, um, Derek (I kid, they are both wonderful, but Scott made me say it!)

I had CMEpalooza pulled up on my TV earlier this week, and it was great to hear what everyone had to say. I’ve been limited to my laptop and its speakers for so many weeks, which just doesn’t have the same effect, so actually being able to watch a bigger screen was a nice treat. If you missed or want to replay any of the CMEpalooza Spring 2020 sessions, they are all available online here (just click “View archive” under each session title).

While creating my farewell post, it’s impossible to not address the elephant in the room, COVID-19. It has tremendously impacted our industry. All of us are in this same boat of uncertainty, thinking about how we can help the front-line staff fighting for survival every day while also continuing the “normal business” of educating the full swath of healthcare providers. I love the quote, “Change is the only constant in life.” COVID-19 has brought a lot of change, but it has also brought opportunity. A few sessions during CMEpalooza Spring addressed ways in which their organization is adapting to our new world. With each session, there was something all of us can take away from the conversation and change about our current processes to better our programs.

The 9 a.m. session, entitled “How Should the CE Industry Respond to a Novel Healthcare Crisis,” brought the interesting perspective of a frontline provider that I hadn’t heard yet.

The 10 a.m. session talked about the proposed changes to the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support. After this session, the proposed changes don’t seem like such a shock anymore. Perhaps that’s because we’re in a shocking state in general, but if the changes are approved, we’ll have time to adjust, and in the end, it will be fine. We can do it!

The 11 a.m. session was all about OUTCOMES! They nicely tied together best practices for National Board of Medical Examiners guidelines, how to create questions, and tips on ways review your data (measurements and costs).

The noon session panelists shared their perspectives on ways to focus on behavioral change to meet outcomes and how to help physicians adopt tools to meet their educational goals and improve patient care.

The 1 p.m. session was a nice discussion where panelists shared opportunities and their expertise on how to build momentum to move forward with educational redesign.

The 2 p.m. session was a great one to listen to. Even though we don’t submit grant requests at my institution, it was interesting to hear how things go down on the grant supporter side. I also learned a new term – change of scope – and that there is an expectation to have a contingency plan in place when submitting grants.

The 3 p.m. session was Jake Powers. They did it again! I love this session. It’s a great blend of creativity and knowledge. I thought it was funny that I hadn’t heard of “change of scope” before the previous session, and then Jake Powers solved the mystery for me by providing the definition and applying it. So much better than what Google would have provided. Thank you, Jack, I mean Jake!

The 4 p.m. session is one of my favorite formats. It is nice to see real-life cases that affect our community and hear how a variety of panelists would approach each challenge. The session was split so you got to hear how the MEEC group and hospital-based group would handle different scenarios presented. (Tiger King was a hot topic… just kidding it was COVID-19)

As always, every session was great, and I really enjoyed learning from my peers. It is so important during this time to reach out to your fellow colleagues, participate in these online meetings, read online articles, and/or listen to podcasts. As it relates to the CME industry, not the news (as I’m steering clear for a bit), it makes me feel more at ease to be in the know and hear about how others are adapting to the changes.

I remind you all to take deep breaths through the moments of uncertainty, stress, and anxiety that will arise in the coming weeks and months. You are not alone.

It has been a great experience working with Scott and Derek, and I thank them for the opportunity to be part of this extraordinary community. I’m sure I’ll see you all around!

Be Well and Be Safe,

Katie O’Connell – First-Ever CMEpalooza Intern 😊

In so many, many ways, it’s been a month like no other. We’ve had to change pretty much every routine in our lives in a manner that would have seemed unfathomable even weeks ago. I find myself zigzagging around the neighborhood like I’m coming off a 2-week bender as I try to avoid getting too close to anyone. I voluntarily took on an art project this weekend to make a mask out of an old t-shirt. Yes, me, the guy who jokes he was the first person to get a “G” in high school art class because I am about as crafty as, err, someone who is not at all crafty. My DIY mask looks like crap, but it works (sort of).

Yet with all the chaos in our lives, CMEpalooza is perhaps the lone “normal” thing left for some of us. It’s nothing more than dumb luck that we were already a virtual meeting and we already had faculty who could participate from just about anywhere before our world came crashing down. Our faculty had all committed to our Spring agenda before the worst of the Covid-19 crisis hit, and they’ve fortunately all stayed with us (thanks to all of them). It’s almost been business as usual across the board.

I know it’s been a bit of a personal salvation to be able to turn to the blog and lean on our panelists, sponsors, and other friends when things get a bit too heavy, to be able to turn to CMEpalooza to help breathe and calm myself down a bit. We hope that we’ve brought a smile and sense of calm to your lives, at least a little, in this past month and that our Spring broadcast from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. ET this Wednesday, April 15, will help you feel a little bit normal again too.

We’ll have some more specifics coming up in the next 2 days to help you navigate through things, but here are a few tips to help you settle in to join us on Wednesday:

1. If you haven’t done so already check out the full Spring agenda. Yes, you’ll be hearing a good deal throughout the day about how Covid-19 is impacting our industry and will continue to do so in the near future, but we also have some sessions planned where you may not hear much about it at all. I think we can all agree that sometimes we just need a break from all the talk about the current health pandemic to focus on other things that are going on in the world.
2. There is no pre-registration or forms to fill out to watch any of our sessions. Just go to LIVE tab to tune in. It’s all free, as it always has been. Maybe you’ve got a fancy office setting like Derek with a TV and a Roku Stick so you can beam our sessions on the big screen while you “work.” That’d be pretty cool.
3. If you miss any of our sessions, fear not. They land in the Archives pretty quick (like, within an hour).
4. We’ll be using Poll Everywhere for several of our sessions to bring some interactivity to our panels. You’ll be able to participate either on your laptop/desktop through their website (www.polleverywhere.com) or on your tablet/phone through their app (you can download it here). The meeting code this Spring is cmepalooza000 (we’ll remind you on Wednesday).
5. We’ve got a few new features we’ll be introducing this year. I am personally giddy with anticipation for the debut of CMEpalooza Stretch. I won’t tell you when it’s happening. Just know that Derek is really, really excited about it too (Note from Derek: I am…less excited about it than Scott.)
6. If you have a few minutes and want to check out the “best of the best” in CME, poke through the work our Sponsors have been doing. Crises often beget innovation, and I’m proud to see some of the education our community has been able to share in recent weeks to the knowledge-starved medical community and general public.
7. Make sure you have plenty of toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, construction paper, papier mache, and paper airplanes lying around. Because, you know, the paper product line is going to be the first thing to go in time of national emergency. I really don’t get this one.