With only about 6 weeks to go until CMEpalooza Fall and summer vacation officially over, our internal promotion team will be furiously working over the course of the next few weeks to give you a flavor of what to expect on Wednesday, October 21. Expect to see airplanes with colorful banners trailing behind in a city near you.

But first, we have our initial moderator interview with Erik Brady, PhD, CHCP, of Clinical Care Options ready to whet your appetite. The theme for this year’s interviews is “The Best and Worst of…” where you’ll hear a little bit about our moderators’ best (and worst) experiences in CME. This may entail a project that went fantastically well (or flopped miserably), a presentation of their own that rocked (or rolled), or something else along those lines. We give people latitude to interpret the theme as they see fit.

During these interviews, we’ll also be knocking off a little bit of the rust from our production team, as you may note from some of the spotty camerawork. Hey, that’s what you get when these are recorded the day before a holiday weekend.

Derek’s Commodore 64 finally crapped out so he was unable to join us for this broadcast, but in happier news, if you are in the market for a circa-1987 floppy disk drive, he’ll sell you one for cheap!

I am not even going to attempt to top Scott’s A Few Good Men parody from last week. I briefly considered re-enacting this classic scene from Billy Madison, but then reconsidered upon reflecting that perhaps not everyone has as much appreciation of the oeuvre of Adam Sandler as I do.

On to other things. We have had a really nice response to our call for questions for our “Why Did My Grant Request Get Rejected?” panel with 20+ questions submitted thus far. We’re setting a deadline of end of day on Monday, August 24 for question submissions. If you have a question for our panel, please submit it by then. You can do so below.

Are we clear?

Crystal.

When Derek sent over his most recent post for me to rewrite entirely (I am nice and often just claim I “edit” his work), I was in a punchy mood. That’s what happens when you work from home and your closest conversation buddy is a Phillie Phanatic pillow.

Anyway, Derek asked people to submit questions for our upcoming CMEpalooza Fall session entitled “Why Did My Grant Request Get Rejected?” (incidentally, still plenty of time to submit yours by going here) and what follows is the first thing I thought of.

Maybe you’ll laugh. Maybe you won’t. Just don’t ask me to act out the scene. It’s been done poorly by too many others too many times. Just imagine the voices in your head.

You want answers?

I think I’m entitled.

You want answers?!

I want the truth!

You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world where grant requests get rejected every day. The education of an industry… no, the future of medicine and the health of the world is in my hands. I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. Who’s gonna educate our current and future healthcare workers? You, McGowan? You, Perez?

The truth is that you don’t want to know why your grant request got rejected because deep down in those places you don’t talk about at the Alliance meeting, you know that your gaps were flimsy, your educational design was laughable, and your outcomes were unmeasurable.

In our world, we use words like “needs assessment,” “quality improvement,” and “Level 7 outcomes.” We use these words as the backbone of a life improving patient outcomes. You use them as a punchline for CME knock knock jokes.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who supports his family thanks to my funding his $75,000 grant request. I would rather you just filed your outcomes report and reconciliation on time and be on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you fund your own educational activities. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

Next month: We recreate one of the most memorable scenes from “Alf”  when we ask you to complete a brief survey or two from some of our other Fall panels.