JAOA • Vol 105 • No 5 • May 2005 • 267-
Quizzes in AOA Custom Publications Now Valid for 18 Months
Carolyn Schierhorn
During its midyear meeting in February, the American Osteopathic
Association's (AOA's) Board of Trustees agreed to standardize the length of
time DOs can earn continuing medical education credit for the AOA's custom
publications.
Effective retroactive to January 2004, CME quizzes are now valid for 18
months from the date AOA custom publications are distributed. Those
publications include supplements to JAOA—The Journal of the American
Osteopathic Association, The Whole Patient supplements to The
DO, the AOA's Women and Wellness newsletter, and the AOA
Health Watch newsletter.
Previously, DOs could earn CME from such publications from the date of
publication until the end of the 3-year CME cycle in which the publications
were published. Under the former protocol, the CME quiz in a custom
publication published at the beginning of a CME cycle was valid for
approximately 3 years, whereas a quiz in a publication published at the end of
a cycle was valid for only a few months.
"By standardizing the life span of CME quizzes in our custom
publications, we are increasing the options DOs have for earning CME credits
because the AOA is no longer inadvertently giving preferred treatment to those
supplements published early in a CME cycle," emphasizes AOA Editor in
Chief Gilbert E. D'Alonzo, Jr, DO. "Our new protocol should also
alleviate any confusion DOs may have had about the longevity of the CME
quizzes in these publications."
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No Longer Tied to CME Cycle
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In the process of approving the new protocol, the AOA Board stipulated that
CME credits earned from AOA custom publications apply toward the CME cycle in
progress when DOs submit quizzes to the AOA.
"Now, each quiz is valid for the CME cycle in which you take it,
which may not be the same CME cycle in which the publication was printed. That
streamlines the process for DOs tremendously," adds Dr D'Alonzo, who is
a professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care
Medicine at the Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
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Basics of CME Quizzes
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Quizzes in the JAOA's supplements carry 2 hours of AOA Category
1-B credit, while quizzes in The Whole Patient carry 1 hour of
Category 1-B. The type of CME osteopathic physicians can earn for completing
quizzes in the Women and Wellness and the AOA Health Watch
newsletters is currently pending.
In addition to being able to take the quizzes in the hard-copy version of
each custom publication, AOA members can take the quizzes on DO-Online, which
is located at
www.do-online.org.
After logging into the password-protected portion of DO-Online, AOA members
can find the quizzes by clicking on the link titled "CME &
Continuing Education" on the left-hand navigation bar.
The 18-month life span for CME quizzes does not currently apply to regular
issues of the JAOA. But at its February meeting, the AOA Committee on
Professional Publications recommended that the AOA soon adopt that standard
for the JAOA too.
Ms Schierhorn is assistant director of publications for The DO
magazine.
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No Longer Tied to...
Basics of CME Quizzes
