ACEhp CPD Pulse Points December Edition: Looking Back to Look Forward

In April 2020, the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEhp) began a weekly series of webinars called "CPD Pulse Points." In each session, Chitra Subramanian, current ACEhp president, has a conversation with a guest about a topic relevant to health care continuing professional development (CPD) today. Access is free for ACEhp members. Non-members can attend the live sessions for $5 or purchase a recording for $25. Each session is recorded and made available for learners who are unable to attend the live meeting, so if any of the sessions sound interesting to you, they are available for viewing in full.

Due to the holidays, the 2020 CPD Pulse Points wrapped up with a single session in December. This session was similar to the two "Members Reflect" sessions held in November, but it was a bit more structured, and the presenters come from the ineligible company side of things—what we used to call commercial entities until the middle of last month. (Read about the updates that occurred mid-December here). Despite the necessary wall that exists between eligible and ineligible companies when it comes to creating CPD activities, this presentation reminded me that we are all working toward the same goal when it comes to education.

• 1.) We need to reflect on all of the changes brought by 2020 so that we can plan for future uncertainties. As an MPH who had an entire class dedicated to disaster planning, the lack of disaster planning we do as an industry stood out to me early in the pandemic. Now that we have mostly successfully managed to continue working throughout the disaster of 2020, we should use this experience to imagine the worst and make a plan so that we're ready if and (likely) when the next disaster occurs
• 2.) We need to reflect on our culture, values, history, and the disparities that may be within our own industry. We hear it all the time: representation matters. But it's true. We can preach about designing activities to address health disparities and systemic problems, but we also need to practice what we preach. In the world of planners, providers, accreditors, and supporters, what are we doing right and what do we need to do better?
• 3.) We need to be honest with ourselves about the work that it will take to create activities that follow the research on learning. We are good at creating activities that include research-based content, but is the design of the presentation research-based? In some ways, this may be the hardest change to make because we have to convince our learners that "traditional" methods of education are not shown to be conducive to truly learning
• 4.) There are things that we are comfortable with because "that's the way it's always been." The past year shows us that we need to become comfortable with some discomfort so that we can grow, change, and be better in the future. To quote my demotivational coffee mug: "Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid"

The following is the session held in December.

The Future of Learning is Now: Being the Transformational Change We Want To See, December 3, 2020 

Image credit: Itzuvit. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0