A report from the Council on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) (formerly CME) of the Canadian Ophthalmological Society. The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada has traditionally been responsible for setting standards of excellence in residency training (certification of residency training programs), ensuring standards of entry requirements into specialties (credentialling applicants) and evaluating and certifying completion of these programs (examination process). It became apparent that despite these intensive quality assurance activities during residency training there were no such quality assurance activities during a specialist’s 30-40 years of practice.
As a result, the Royal college initiated the Maintenance of Competence (MOCOMP) program almost 10 years ago to ensure competence and promote excellence for all specialty physicians and surgeons in Canada. At that time, we were the only specialty college in the world that did not have some sort of quality assurance activities relating to continuing medical education.
The MOCOMP program was voluntary and after many years a minority of specialists registered with this program and an even smaller minority actually used it. With the increasing requirements for accountability by the public and governing bodies (hospital boards, CMPA, provincial licensing bodies, regional health boards, ministries of health etc.) it was felt that a mandatory Maintenance of Certification Program (MOC) should be developed to demonstrate continued competence and promote excellence.
Specialty Societies Responsible for Quality of Education
In keeping with the concept that the national specialty societies should best know how to promote this excellence, the Royal College plans to hand over the standard-setting (accreditation) functions to the specialty societies. This means that the specialty societies (e.g.: COS) will be responsible for ensuring the quality of our various educational activities and be totally responsible for their content. The Royal College will henceforth only be involved with providing a Web site for record keeping of individual ophthalmologist’s educational activities and then recertifying those individuals who have completed the Maintenance of Certification Program periodically (5 years).
The first 5-year Maintenance of Certification Program begins January 1, 2001 and the first cycle will be completed December 31, 2005. Each practitioner must obtain 400 credits for each 5-year cycle (approximately 1 1/2 hours per week). All specialists will be listed on a publicly accessible list of those who have maintained certification and will remain on this list at each 5-year renewal unless they have not demonstrated the required Maintenance of Certification activities. For the first cycle there is a bonus (6th) year from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2000. Your educational activities must be entered for this bonus year before January 31, 2001.
In response to these developments the Canadian Ophthalmological Society has enlarged the Council on CPD (previously CME) to include representation from the subspecialty groups, annual meeting committee, Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology, Web site and Royal College Maintenance of Certification Committee.
This core committee had its first planning meeting in November in Ottawa. We agreed that this committee should coordinate the increased quality, scope and accessibility of educational activities for COS members. We felt we should simplify and streamline the recently developed Maintenance of Certification requirements, and we felt we should be responsible to the educational needs of all ophthalmologists in Canada. We completed the Royal College application to become the accredited provider of educational material for our members. We developed a Mission Statement as required by the Royal College and we worked on details of the upcoming Toronto Annual Meeting and drew up a tentative list of other committees that will report to the core committee.
We have scheduled a meeting of the combined sub-specialty chairs and CJO section editors as well as the Maintenance of Certification Committee in February 2001 to finalize details of the upcoming Toronto Annual Meeting, to develop more specific maintenance of certification strategies, and to begin implementation of the various educational activities for the next 4-5 years.
Town Hall Meeting to Discuss Details
At the COS meeting in Toronto in 2001, we will be having another Town Hall breakfast meeting on June 23, from 7:30 to 8 am, to discuss more details of the above changes and the new Maintenance of Certification Program. There will also be a Royal College booth at the meeting to help members with hands-on registration for the Maintenance of Certification Program for those who have not done so already. We would, however, strongly encourage you to register now, in order to get the bonus 6th year in the first cycle. Information about this registration can be obtained on the COS Web site <www.eyesite.ca> and the Royal College Web site <www.rcpsc.med.org>. Don’t forget that January 31, 2001 is the last date for which you can enter all your 2000 activities on the Royal College Web site if you want to have 6 years instead of 5 for the first Maintenance of Certification cycle.
I will be chairing the Town Hall meeting in June and will be happy to receive feedback and questions at [email protected].
I look forward to seeing you in Toronto in June.
Duncan P. Anderson, MD
Chairman, Council on Continuing Professional Development
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