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.

Our 10 a.m. ET session at CMEpalooza Fall is titled “Why Did My Grant Request Get Rejected?” which, I think, is pretty direct and self-explanatory. Our panel’s goal for this session is to answer as many of your questions as possible about the grant review process. In order to do so, we would love to try and get a bunch of questions from the CME community ahead of time so we can see some of the common themes and know how to best prepare our panelists. We really want this to be a participant-driven session and our panel will do their best to directly address as many of the questions as they can.

If you have ever had a question about the grant review process — be it about the budget, application, outcomes, etc. — now is your chance to ask it. Just fill out the (extremely) simple survey below. And no, smart guy, your question cannot be “Why did my grant request get rejected?”

The blog’s been a bit quiet lately as we took a little break due to summer vacation schedules and Scott’s rigorous touring schedule as the sixth member of One Direction. However, I’m thrilled to be back in the blogging saddle to announce PlatformQ as our latest CMEpalooza Fall Gold Sponsor! PlatformQ is sponsoring our lunchtime session (lunch on the east coast, breakfast on the west coast) which is titled Expanding the Focus: Patient Education from CME Providers. We’ve put together an excellent panel for this session and I think it should be a fascinating discussion. You can read more details about this session and the rest of the agenda on our CMEpalooza Fall agenda page.

While we’re on the topic of our sponsors, please allow me a brief moment to acknowledge and thank our new and returning sponsors:

NEW

• Gold
  • PlatformQ
•  Silver
  • Educational Measures (OK, not a new sponsor, but a new silver sponsor)
• Bronze
  • PVI
  • Thistle Editorial, LLC

RETURNING

• Gold
  • Genentech
• Silver
  • Imedex
  • MedPageToday
• Bronze
  • Clinical Care Options
  • CMEology
  • Forefront Collaborative
  • HighMarksCE
  • Vindico Medical Education

Please visit our sponsor page to find out more about each of these companies. For more information on becoming a CMEpalooza sponsor, please check out our sponsorship prospectus.