Vaccines Offer Hope and Renewed Energy.

Happy New Year, to all! It is a new year of great anticipation. Multiple vaccines have arrived to keep us safe from the deadly virus of 2020. We predict that vaccination and risk mitigation will impact SACME members in a very direct way as they go about their essential missions of promoting the quality of patient care and the health of the public through scholarship in CME/CPD. It may mean that we are likely to see at least a limited return of live educational activities, in combination with e-learning formats (both synchronous and asynchronous), in order to continue to expand participant access, assure greater teacher-learner interaction, advance learner retention and hopefully change behaviors and improve care outcomes. CME/CPD providers, and their faculty who are equipped with a new competency in e-learning technology, are well positioned to plan multi-modal educational activities (heralded to be the most effective learning model by researchers and educators) as a preferred standard activity format for the future. David Price, MD and Craig Campbell, MD in their insightful article Rapid Retooling, Acquiring New Skills, and Competencies in the Pandemic Era: Implications and Expectations for Physician Continuing Professional Development (JCEHP Spring 2020, Volume 40, Number 2, 74-75) imagine the possibilities and challenges for all CME/CPD providers to consider in the near future, post-COVID.

Another innovation likely to become more common practice is the longitudinal curriculum, whereby learners are engaged over a period of weeks, even months, using a virtual format, with intermittent lectures, workshops and discussion boards. The one-day, live curriculum will become a “kick-off” event to a much longer, intensive and useful educational experience. It will be exciting to see if and how both these innovations come into practice over the new year.

In this issue, we continue to develop our new format and offer important updates from SACME committee chairs, a list of highly relevant and useful scholarly publications for clinician-educators and CME/CPD professionals from Dr. Rayburn, plus two insightful articles from Dr’s Fillipe and Hlede which we hope you enjoy. As always, we encourage your feedback.

Wishing our readers the very best in 2021,

Robert Dantuono, MHA and Martin Tremblay, PhD
Editors, CE News