Welcome to the European CME Forum podcast. European CME Forum is a not-for-profit organisation that promotes multi-channel discussion on matters relating to European and global CME CBD. My name is Eugene Posniak. I'm the programme director of European CME Forum. We've been working hard on putting together the agenda for the upcoming 17th annual European
CME Forum, or 17ECF, taking place six to the 8th of November in Madrid, Spain. In today's episode, I'm joined by Lauren Sherman to discuss the background and our approach to the meeting to give you a good idea of what to expect in Madrid next month. Hi, Laurence. Great to see you here. Thanks very much for joining me to discuss 17ECF. I cannot believe that we have done this 17 times together. It is incredible. There are only three of us
who've been to every single meeting. You me and Robin Stevenson, who've actually just watched how the in effect how CME in Europe has evolved and of course we're going Europe and beyond as well with this meeting. You know what's interesting is I went to the ECF website and I looked back at the programmes from some of the early ones and I had forgotten how in depth we got in some topics that in the for you know one ECF and two ECF were so important and now maybe not too much,
but that's the evolution. So you know I really think people should look at that and look at those agenda as almost the history of European CME in this century. Yeah, no that's lovely. Yeah well
put. I mean and the way that we develop the the meeting of course we respond to the annual survey that we do each year and we were looking to actually to publish that from whenever we study it was about six or seven ECF when survey monkey came online and it's interesting to see how attitudes, opinions have changed over time and of course it's reflected in the programmes you say. But I wonder if it might be fun to put together like a compilation reel of the agenda is over time
and it just might be fun. I don't know anybody besides you and I and maybe Robin would enjoy it but I do think it really does paint a picture. It may even be a good paper to write for Jack me or something like that we should probably talk about that. Yeah yeah. No and we did well every soft night do sort of end up looking back and I know for the early sessions
there was a huge focus on accreditation. How did you get things accredited? Because right back there it's yeah just the ECF then because we didn't know it was the first annual meeting at that stage. It was just the it was going to be a one-off meeting in fact and at that time we were inviting we invited a multitude of accreditation bodies to talk about their systems. So we've seen that
that they have aligned over the years and same with the farmer companies. Each drug company had different ways of funding education so we had the drug company people all lined up talking about their specific way and there weren't really education providers back then. It was still in the hands of MedCom's agencies. The promotional sector was we're getting their activities accredited so yeah we've got to come a long long way since then. No kidding I remember my memory of one ECF or ECF
that first time was my flight was canceled from New York to London. I was coming in a day early to meet and you know get stuff together and the pilot was sick so I had to go back home and then take another flight the next day. That's my vivid memory of the first ECF. Wow wow and actually just stay on one ECF there's something that's just come come to mind as well and especially now while we're talking about implementing technological solutions to CME programming
that very first meeting we were approached by Keypad Company asking if they could showcase their brand new technology at our meeting for free no cost and we said okay so on the last day you'll hand out these sort of handheld devices for people to be able to vote from the seats in their chair. So now we see this as ancient technology but to think that was literally 16 years ago that basic Keypad with what four buttons on it were seen as a technical innovation.
Great. Oh, what about this year? What are we going to do different? Right well first off just just thinking about sort of the technology side of things. The overall theme of the meeting is tomorrow's world today. Okay so in the UK there was a program it's called tomorrow's world it was running when when we were sort of youthful and whole idea was to showcase technology it might take off in five, ten, fifteen years time or something and over the past few
months especially with the rise of Gen AI it feels like each day we wake up we're hitting tomorrow's world and that was sort of the inspiration to this so there will be a focus on newer technologies and especially AI because that is obviously the special collection that we're running in
Jack me this year the Journal of CME and so we'll have a session on that and the main I think now that as you're talking about what's happened over the over the years it seems that each stakeholder group is consolidating itself in its roles in CME so we'll be approaching the meeting of various angles just examining our CME environment in Europe and around the world.
You know it strikes me you know my brain works an interesting way as you were talking about that tomorrow's world today kind of thing is with AI tomorrow has actually become yesterday because we're we're we're moving so fast that we don't even have time to have today because today
is already absolutely yeah yeah it really feels like that and with every call and I'm having planning call for the meeting people are coming up with fantastic examples and I'm just if you just even the simplest tips and tricks on how to converse with chat GPT it's just the revelation so I just don't know where we're going to be in this time next year it's moving so so fast.
Yeah I use AI every day and I find it to be incredibly helpful and I see it across the continuum of health professions education so from undergraduate to postgraduate to CPD and I see it across the timeline of CPD activities from needs assessments through outcomes
and there's some really interesting work going on in undergraduate health professions education where they're actually using it and comparing it to the assessments that they're doing of the students and really using it to build upon yeah I don't look at AI as artificial intelligence I look at it as augmented intelligence and it really helps us do things better when we use it right and it's
not meant to replace everything it's meant to make us more efficient. Yeah absolutely yeah and you still need an expert that critical eye over what's come back so so the AI becomes just another team member rather than a replacement for the team right so so let's help me to see what we're doing
across the several days of the 17 ECF activities. Okay so I mean the most important thing is to highlight that the meeting starts at nine o'clock in the morning on that Wednesday 6th of November so normally we'd start at lunchtime and do some pre-meeting sessions or whatever that's that
about half the people used to actually turn up but in response to feedback we've had over the past couple of years now you know people are asking the meeting they're saying you know we get into the meeting and suddenly all these acronyms jargon are being thrown around individuals are spoken about
organizations are spoken about I don't know who these people are and so please help us so so that session at nine o'clock in the morning which is going to actually address that it's directly and we're calling it CME nuts and bolts really and instead of having a group of experts at the
front of the room saying this is what you should know and then I will share my wisdom for the next 45 minutes we were actually inviting people who are not that comfortable maybe newcomers to European CME forum not not people who aren't experts in CME but just let's call them newcomers to
CME forum and they're going to ask the question of the audience right I've heard of the following things please help us understand what they are I'm looking to gamify this as well so it should be fun and it's just to really ground people in the room just this this is the language that we use and
and how we operate do you have sort of a list of the terms and people that you're going to sort of go from to help these people to to have that conversation or are they meant to generate them organic okay so as part of the planning process in fact there's this we've related a small team of people
and before the next planning call we're going to be looking to between 20 and 30 questions they fed back saying we've identified the following 20 to 30 things that we're not sure of or we found challenging when we started working in CME so so this is this is the starting point so it really
is it's going to be you know drawn by group of people actually identifying the challenges that they found when they started out in CME that's awesome because when you said gamify I'm thinking maybe you have a big board on the screen with all 30 of them and you sort of as you take them off
because some may be covered in some may not or maybe you do it as bingo and you give out card and you know you just see who's with all different permutations of the list I don't know there's just some things that could make it also fun and engage absolutely yeah now we're seeing this is a
nice sort of warm-up session like that and and this is this is the sort of the very beginning because that pre-meeting session we're splitting into or they were presenting two tracks and one is and this this CME nuts and bolts is the beginning of the the track which we're calling core skills in CME
CPD so the idea is people get this introduction to the terminology we use in the meeting and and then we the second 45 minute session is on the role of the CME provider you know there is there's still a lot of confusion out there who are these CME providers who are these people who actually develop
education in Europe you know without being too promotional that may be a point if you know it's always interesting to me to see if anybody's had any formal training in education or in CPE specifically but you know that new course just lunch from Amy where it's sick modules and
really covers the first module is really the basic CME and then it gets more in-depth as some of the topics are explored more in-depth but I wonder if people don't know that resources exist and that's not the only resource but I wonder if part of what you can do for these folks is to give
them also a list of resources and courses and training that they can go through because I know when I've hired people and brought them in I know that I can train them I think that I can train them in a way that they'll understand why we're doing what we're doing many people that I encounter
not just in Europe but around the world don't understand the why of CPD and I don't know I just thought that maybe we can provide some resources as well no that's great and then we started this it started making a dent into this two years ago and last year so actually all registered
participants to 17 ECF have access to 16 ECF and that archive of recordings and also there's a page there on resources no where we we're actually having conversation in the room and we ask people to submit where do you go for your CME education where do you go to learn about CPD beds practices what journals do you read etc and we collated it in a page so people have access to that who registered to 17 ECF and yeah let's expand that this year and let's add this stuff that's launched since then
yes yes and then that oh yeah but I love that because I think sometimes we forget that we are the one of the tools of professional development for the folks in CPD and we're focused so much on I think the experienced provider and we're thinking about what can we talk about that's new and shiny and
snazzy and that the basics are often missed and I think that's a really important point you know the other thing that you and I talk about a lot is the faculty within our activity and providing them with resources because many of them have never been trained to teach in CPD
many of them pull from either how they were they were taught or they teach an undergraduate or postgraduate as clinician educator and they don't know the difference between what we're not the difference they don't they haven't built the competencies to teach the adult learner already
in practice as opposed to teaching the student or the training so just that's one of those things I think we should probably address at some point whether it's a 17 ECF or 18 ECF or 20 ECF but at some point it's one of those things because that's what I hear the most is that is frustration with
faculty yeah yeah absolutely and and and also with the professionalism of the providers and just for the whole ecosystem to understand each other's roles and that this is actually a serious endeavor yeah it shouldn't be a part-time hobby thing that people have a go at because they saw someone do
something similar last year it's it's becoming a serious industry that needs formal training as you say so I think that Amy course must be the first time out anything outside of North America that's that's available of course in the US you know there's the certificate the CHCP this CHCP designation
where people can actually especially Foku actually start out in in CME can learn the basics and demonstrate it in some way and have those letters after their name showing the world that they have had some kind of training in CME and and that we hear this year after year you know is
there something more formal that people can to tap into I would say CHCP is isn't reflective of formal training it's reflective of competencies and practice so it may not have been acquired through training it may have been acquired as many of us did for years on the job training you know trial
by fire and and I know they've done a great job with the CHCP exam to continue to make it relevant as things change so yeah I think that's right and you know the interesting thing about the Amy course I don't want to dwell on it is that it was pressure tested in all of the WHO
regions so somebody from every region around the world evaluated at least once and evaluated of course to make sure that it was at least a 10,000 feet relevant to their practice environment great great um yeah and then carrying on with this sort of course skills in CPD track um then we
start going in getting into educational design we've got a session um on um yeah just to say educational design especially one is titled knowledge is not enough we'll be releasing more information about this you sort of front end planning and then understanding by design looks
at sort of the outcomes um piece of the picture how to design education um appropriately and things like you know more outcomes framework the concept of backward planning and things in a way that's easy to digest using language that we'll be using during the meeting so if someone actually
goes through these four sessions in the course skills track they will be equipped with the the background knowledge and understanding of how a CME activity is put together and get more out of the meeting yeah and then the second track is is the specialist group sessions so these are the
sessions that we opened up after the pandemic and it was beforehand as we had CME professionals meeting at ECF so you know the group from farmer would get together and meeting a room to talk about their things which of course led to article 16 of the FBA code of practice and things
that was year after year of discussion and and collaboration in in that way the medical societies um present their perspective on their role in in CME and and um and this year actually was starting off with an accredite the accreditors so members from the international academy for CPT accreditation
are are running a session just to talk about the value of accreditation not how to get things accredited or the actual process but but just why is it there and why is it important in our in our eco sphere here are they going to cover what to do if your energyography where accreditation does
them I would hope that that is covered that someone would ask that question because that's yeah that's critical to the work of the international academy because of course their members there from countries with the mature systems US Canada through several European countries and then yeah
the countries where accreditation doesn't have that kind of weight so yeah what is the value of accreditation then so there'll be a perfect question to ask them when they're when they're presenting on that Wednesday morning um then then we have a session that members of the good CME practice group
will will will run with members from the farmer companies so they're going to be talking about how to essentially navigate RFPs and grant requests and what are the appropriate relations between um education providers and farmers there's so many questions at the moment so many drug companies
special ones I'm speaking to for for this meeting just generally just saying we're being asked non-compliant questions they're wanting us to be involved in various things it says we've got our own rules we cannot talk to providers like this so it's important and we're thinking it's
important to have both sides really having a session like this where where they can actually discuss and and it's not one size fits all there is there is the as you know there's that gradation of how close or far you have to keep from a drug company but just to bring this out and see open
and illustrate it in real life yeah you know it's funny um I think about the the bad CME practice group as opposed to the good CME practice group and and those folks who have the inappropriate relationship with the ineligible companies with with the supporters of the education
and and sometimes it's a matter of the competencies of the ordinance of the provider organization where for years they had relationships outside of the ground office and now they have to work with the ground office and they don't realize that they can't continue to talk to the people
outside of the ground office in addition to talking to the people inside the ground office I I think that's such a worthwhile session and I love that it has the two sides of the cone right so I think that I'm sure the supporters that you have the the the representatives of
industry are those who get it and that's important because sometimes it's the provider that has to educate the supporter when the supporter isn't one who comes to ECF or the alliance meeting or Amy to understand how to work compilantly so you know I think that that's great and there's
almost a need for a guide for those supporters and some cone no absolutely and it's uh it's one of these things that you were trying to work out when we would be uh bringing up the situation in UK and and the the mess there with the with the the CME system and funding and excluding UK
healthcare professionals from internationally funded um CME CPD activities but it's this this kind of session that brings to the fore the importance of um just just understanding appropriate conversations and relations and and not uh having a situation where drug companies are responsible for content because that's just completely non-compliant and should never be considered as a
credited CME. I'm going to say it was 2013 when I did uh I give a presentation together with somebody from a supporter organization it was when that met up from Mars women are from Venus the book was big it was a play out Broadway so um it was Jason Singer from Lily and I did a
almost a road show in several conferences uh providers are from Mars supporters are from Venus because there was that need to understand each other's environment right it's almost like interprofessional education it's you've got to learn from within about each other and sometimes
the providers don't understand the the challenges that the supporters have within their own organizations to remain compliant and to get the funding that they can then hopefully give to our good CME providers and and I think it's sometimes uh just that lack of understanding leads to
perhaps some of the challenges you know you bring up that UK situation for the first time ever I saw an RFP containing the word geofence um where a a a supporter said we have to you know in order to be a recipient of this a grant you have to demonstrate how you will geofence
and block UK providers from any online education I'm like wow so we've got to cover that they still have to talk about that yeah no and yeah RFPs that are being issued this RFP geographic scope anywhere in the world except the UK right you know and but the the the challenge
we have is that people in the UK can't see that they're blocked from from this it's like it's like trying to prove a negative or proving that there's something doesn't exist there's a I I still need to fight someone in a position in the UK who can actually sort of look up or maybe
pop over to France and be physically stopped from entering a satellite symposium because they're British to actually understand the the British health care professionals are being excluded from from CME it's it is a bit bonkers but anyway we'll cover this and the situations in
Italy, Spain, Germany, other countries throughout the meeting um and then the last of the specialist group sessions you know we've invited some members from the medical societies in Europe to discuss this their side of the story but of course they are as much sort of education providers as
sort of the rest of us who are swimming these waters as it were you know challenges with addressing learners and developing effective education right so this is brand new then for this year yeah so this this session which which hopefully will will give people the confidence and
confidence to to you know feel feel more engaged and and attuned to the meeting itself so then yeah we're going to the main room um I'll start off with the sort of my usual half hour presentation on on the results from the annual survey and having a bit of reflection of what's happened over the 12 months since we met last year in the Hague and and then this the the first
sort of plenary session will be dedicated to the special collection in Jekmj. So we've had a good batch of papers not a huge number of papers but good quality papers have come in on um using AI in that CME environment they should be published in time for the meeting but um but a few of the authors who've had their manuscripts accepted will be they're presenting their work and discussing uh their experiences when it comes to implementing AI solutions in in their CME programming.
Well you know I when we first talked about that special collection AI two things one we knew that it was going to be new and that by the time the deadline was approaching there weren't going to be a huge number of people who already had the experiences and outcomes from implementing some level of AI within their uh educational activities or in their planning process or whatever.
So I think this is a first step but I think it's it it should be considered an extended um special collection because future we should encourage people as they are now using it and having that lived experience to submit so that we continue the conversation you know special collection
doesn't end. We even remember we thought about having it as a two-year window instead of the one-year window but I know for the sake of a conference it was important to have it as a one-year window but I'd be interested and I would encourage people to continue to share what they're doing quickly
and the nice thing about CME is the time to publishing from submission is quicker than a lot of other journals and that's an important factor because if we're going to share best practices and we want to get it out there in a scholarly fashion we've got to use platforms that can get it out fast if we wait a year for peer review and and you know delay by the time we published something about AI it could be old news so I think it's important to remember that as well so
so it's it's a good number for the time that we had to get it done. Indeed absolutely and even since the deadline but but since then and even actually this morning so we're talking on Friday afternoon for me this morning there was someone who got in touch with an idea for their poster and they said
it was so good that we extended the deadline for two weeks because in that time they've analysed their own work in AI it was a beautiful beautiful AI project and they'll be submitting it as a poster so it's practically like a you know a hotline session so yeah there are a few other places in the
meeting as well where we'll be showcasing some some really cool sort of implementations of Gen AI in the in the programs as well as this so that this theme will run through the meeting which I'm very much looking forward to seeing what people have coming up with. Yeah there was an interesting session in the CPD track at the AMA conference on Gen AI and CPD it was it was really provocative and really good and standing remotely so it's definitely something that people
are thinking about. Great and then after the coffee break so that the we go to our Wednesday workshop sessions now usually these were 90 minutes each so the second change we've introduced to the meeting is it's actually cutting this down as the feedback we're getting from people saying well that's great but I wanted to also see another workshop or all four of them so with agreement I discussed this with the workshop leaders last year who are just saying yeah that's fine we can
actually compress things into 45 minutes and I'll be happy to repeat it as well and that was actually a personal preference I had from years back I remembered repeating a workshop actually three times I just didn't enjoy doing it so I didn't want to inflict that on on the colleagues here in at ECF but everyone's happy to do this so we'll have a repeat of the workshops people can attend in person two iterations and yeah we'll be able to have more people involved in the workshops.
I like that you know the amount of time you spend within a session or an activity is directly related to what you're trying to achieve so if you can achieve something in 45 minutes sometimes I think 90 minute workshops are too long and you people you sort of lose them a little bit
even with the best workshop facilitators so I think the idea of 45 minutes make it concise the challenges the facilitators and faculty to really get the stuff done and be provocative but wary of time and I also like the idea that people get to see every workshop because that's FOMO you know that fear missing out it's true you know I hate when I go to a conference and there's three or four or five parallel sessions and I pick one based on the abstract and the title
and I go in and ten minutes in it's not what I expected and by that time going into the you know the other session that I wouldn't want to go to I missed the impactful part so so this is good it's sort of reduces FOMO yeah yeah no that's great and actually that's a really important point
you are knowing what what to expect so in fact before the meeting each of the workshop leaders will be recording a teaser video which will have on the website everyone can see that so you can evaluate that and even the live on site before we break for the coffee break we ask the chair of
that session to invite the workshop leaders to give an elevator pitch so they have like I know 13 90 120 seconds or so to actually pitch to the room their workshop so that people actually yeah instead of just relying on the title and the abstract you can actually see the character of
the person and just thinking yeah I'd like to go go with that content with this team or that person to to the room so so yeah we're trying to help help participants to work out where they go yeah now I'm having formal because I can't be there on Wednesday well don't worry because by the time
you're there on Thursday morning yeah what we do do to try and address the FOMO thing which we've been doing for a few years now is a reflection session so so we'll have a moderator actually interviewing the workshop leaders to actually just bring out they're not allowed to talk about
their learning objectives or what they were hoping to actually address but talk about the outcomes how people responded in the rooms maybe compare and contrast the two groups so so there is so people will be able to at least get a sense of what they might have missed out the day before
or just further insights into the sessions they did attend so that's that's how the second day will start and then and then during that Thursday we're going to have these three sessions that we started doing last year and we've changed these a little bit as well because we've got the sort of
the opposite challenge last year we had half hour breakouts and they weren't quite long enough to get into the yeah to get into the into the subject matter so so these three sessions they're one and a half hours each so we'll be again people can choose which breakout they go to
have 45 minutes there and then there's the Q&A panel discussion afterwards and the first two we've called thriving today where we'll be looking at things like you know what's current best practice just to either confirm what we're doing or perhaps learn yeah from people doing things well yeah
just just getting up to speed with best practice and the second session is called anticipating tomorrow we were looking at sort of newer kinds of innovations that are being implemented in CME that providers can learn from and so we're not it's not horizon scanning it's not what might be
possible in five years time but it's it's sort of good examples of things we could implement today is that the one I'm a part of I can't remember actually you are a part of that one yeah yeah definitely yeah EP looks at notes um you're too happy it appears
ready readiness to change yeah you're looking at learner behavior aren't you yeah and educational psychology excellent yeah so and in fact this year we you know we had calls for abstracts for everything from well posters are running now but for all these sessions and and we really had to
reject quite a few this year unfortunately a lot of high quality submissions have been coming in so yeah we've been able to choose the sessions that sort of sit well together um and um and should promote you know good discussion and of course you're involved in between these two sessions as
well be discouraged in that we have the ever popular lunch with the learners and um and I think we found now three learners from Madrid two physicians one nurse um but it's all subject to civic obligations etc but um but it's yeah there's there's a cool group of people who sort of we
can do that again this year Lawrence and uh I will do it in Spanish because to be respectful of our learners and knowing that we're in Spain we should do this in in Spanish and have AI translate into English because you're still very comfortable in Spanish because Thomas
classes is manual for uh medicine uh it's very good it's that very important very close yeah um so so uh yeah and the idea here is that we just invite CME naive healthcare professionals to the meeting so of course you have the whole meeting
sometimes we're patting ourselves on the back going hey you hear all these fantastic things that we are doing for our learners well let's get some learners in the room and ask them how do they get their education what do they think of the CME environment themselves and how well are we
serving their needs what a great idea and uh to be honest I don't know that I would say CME naive what I would say is there's CME consumers as opposed to CME developers or teachers and it's important to understand what you said because that's who we're teaching and you know the the
nice thing is we've been doing this I don't know five six seven years now I can't even keep traction anymore ten years we've been doing it uh that we do it in different places and I remember we did it in Barcelona and it'll be interesting to say because my friend came into that one with his
training right it'll be interesting to see even the difference between Catalonian Spain and non-Catalonian Spain at you know Cacillion Spain so so I think it'll be really interesting and it'll be a fun conversation but I know one of the things that you and I have talked about is we both learn
every time we do that session and I think as what I've seen over those I can't listen to but over those ten years is that our ECF participants have become more and more willing to engage with the learners and ask the questions and and be comfortable um and be vulnerable and and I
think one of the things that I'm going to try to bring out in the intro to this session is that our learners are coming here and they're vulnerable they're they're they're they're putting forth their personal preferences and beliefs so I think we have to sort of make it a safe space for everyone absolutely yeah yeah and when everyone's comfortable and relaxed like that we really get some fantastic insight um yeah and every year there is always a fantastic take away take home message
so it'll be fun our website. Excellent so the Thursday finishes with actually the third iteration of that sort of 45 minutes and and discussion afterwards and all I think on the website I'm just putting down case challenge right now because we're structuring something I want it to be a little
bit of a surprise it's going to be something related to patients and like last year it worked really well where we had a case so yeah last year we had just a slide with let's say a bad CME practice kind of example and everyone split into their reassigned groups and they had to look at their
example through the eyes of the leadership of that group so it's that stakeholder group so whether there are creditors or they came from farmer with their education providers and I actually just just work out what was going wrong what was fine etc or what was being done well and we came
into the room for the discussion um we're planning this with the uh the workshop leaders and the moderators to make sure it's slick so that we hit some really important points and and I have to I think it might be a little bit contentious so it's it'll be a great way to end Thursday because
that's really the hard work day I think you know right from the morning a lot of content and it should be a lot of fun as well I love that uh and each day at the end we have a networking reception so for an hour hour and a half it's a time to relax in the poster areas um with a glass of
orange juice or something and to actually be able to network discuss not just with the poster authors but with each other and it's always very popular way of people getting together and just sharing some thoughts ideas and I always like that you know the opportunity for informal and
to then be learning is so important and and the network I know people appreciate that now if you need help selecting the juices the local juices um happy to be part of that planning committee excellent thank you very much thank you um and actually on the on the subject of posters we'll
also be doing um a couple of poster tours and now that'll happen during first day as well because it's really important um because quite a few times posters that are presented by participants of ECF it could be the first professional poster that they that they are presenting and we want to encourage this as much as possible and and even for years why why we set up the journal of CME and we set up these poster sessions at the meeting is to promote scholarship and sharing of best practice
which quite frankly we haven't been that good in Europe um and it's something I was always impressed with going to the US meetings is the way that people are happy to to share their ideas and it's say you know in Europe will be like well why would I talk to a competitor and tell them all my
secrets it's it's not you know don't don't tell them your secrets but share best practice to make the Alice CME environment better uh yeah and you know I think that's something we really need to to address I love that we've included posters more than years uh and and I think we need to encourage
more sharing more scholarship uh you know when you see other aspects of health professions education maybe conferences good example of it there are hundreds of posters but you can't get through the poster hole in a day and it's divided up by topic and sessions I know that we'll never have that
but I do think we need to encourage our people to submit beyond ECF as well and understand that there's the opportunity to promote that scholarship I think you know scholarship and CME is is deep rooted in Canada in the US and then there's a huge drop-off and I think you're right I hear that
I can't share my secret with any other person I have this conversation with somebody last week and the reality is you're not sharing your secret you're showing your success and showing your success success can't be replicated by somebody else and by the time you shared your success you're on to
something new so even if somebody tries to do what you did you did it first and you have an example of it and it's in the public domain so you did it and you had good outcomes and good response apparently so it's meant to help you it's it's a self-marketing tool almost so people should not
be afraid ever to share their work yeah yeah and I'm seeing it being included more often now in pharma RFPs as well how are you going to disseminate the results of your educational activity which were paying a lot of money for as well so and which is quite normal with any grants giving
body whether it's from the European Commission or some national governments it's an expectation if you've received funding in some way is to disseminate those results so yeah presenting posters is a great way of doing that and we've got a good crop this year and actually by the time this
episode comes out the deadline will have finished but we're still receiving submissions today Friday and and we'll expect a few more on Monday as well so that should be really worthwhile um I love that and so I'm looking forward to seeing these posters and what you were alluding to
before about the AI I can't wait to see it yeah yeah it was great and then the final day which is a half day we have a number of it's actually sort of panel sessions now so we can actually sort of I don't want to say sit back I think we can sit in the plenary room and and so consolidate the
the experiences of over the previous couple of days and and just look at some global issues so we start off actually is a session that you're sharing with CME around the world I am moderating this oh yeah yeah and we've got some interesting people from outside of Europe um to discuss just
their experiences there and of course um you know with your work that you've done with Aimee on the the CPD um surveys around the world it's truly a global global survey so so I think yeah what we've discussed already and the the ideas of your approach of approaching things by geography
I enjoy to say a few words about that have you had any sort of further thoughts well you know the one thing that hasn't been done extensively that we tried to do was study DPD systems around the world and we we did it in a very delivered fashion we talked to experts
in uh over 40 countries and then we did a survey of practitioners and so that's that goes back to that point of the learners are the learners satisfied with the CME that they get are they aware of best practices in CME and CPD um what are their challenges and obstacle and you know
it could be it it was a need assessment for what we do it was a global need assessment of the learners the consumers of CPD and there were some surprising findings in there I I know that you saw the paper and medical teacher that was sort of a summative paper but we have one paper that came
out in Jekmian and I read more that's going to probably come out probably before the meeting that focus on the region so Europe Latin America Middle East North Africa in addition to China and then there was another paper that came out earlier this year also on um southeast and East
Asia and there was the Japan study that we did all with the same methodology back in 2018 so there's well over 50 countries worth of data and information uh from the expert perspective so how the CPD done and how our physicians trained down to what the appetite and and preferences and
um barriers and obstacles of the learners and I think there's a lot of interesting points so I'll try to bring that out within that panel but I also want the panelists to speak of what they're proud in the CPD in their area and and where they think they can share a best practice so I think
it'll be a fun session absolutely that's great and it's fun to tell me who the panelists are yes yeah they all will be announcing names as well in the next few weeks and we'll have a planning call very shortly to uh to go through those um and then the the session after that is uh we're getting
a group of interesting people here to talk about the expectations and core competencies of the CME provider in tomorrow's world so still in this theme okay so like from that pre-meeting session where we're talking about these these the skills and competencies of the provider today or
required of the provider today it's looking at you know in the near future what how do we how do we expect the CME provider to look and um and actually to for this to be understood by the other stakeholder groups as well because each each group we see that whether it's the farmer industry, medical
societies, the predators um you know the world is moving really fast and actually to determine how CME activities are planned developed and and delivered um yeah these are feels like shifting sands we have to plan for tomorrow so we'll have a good session exploring uh what this could be
looking like all right all right and then we'll have an update from the journal of CME because we'd have had the board meeting the day before we'll talk about uh whether we're extending the special collection or if overlapping there might be a new deputy editor um announced yeah uh good good
it's in a deputy like a sheriff's deputy do they get you know a whole uniform and a cowboy hat I think it's just a start badge and that's about it with lots of authority yeah that's fighting the play um and then um finishing off with our traditional what the future holds panel discussion
as well with some thought leaders uh in in CME uh considering considering the future and of course right at the end with the whole purpose of European CME forum really is for people to have their questions answered loran so I mean this is a thing that we've been doing for 16 years now yeah
I think we did this every year apart from the very first year was um was was you leading this the uncession unscripted unheld back I don't just for people to be able to to just uh ask their questions yeah well you know the idea was we don't want people to go home with questions
now questions come up once they get home that's a different story but we don't want them to lead especially questions that they may not have come with so there's those two categories people came with questions or or issues that we didn't address fully during the session or during the
conference and then those who have questions that have come up and I think it's nice to be able to do that and it's not just the faculty because there are lots of experts in that room that may not be formal faculty presenting and we have through the years you've been uh tapped uh people in the room
who have a certain expertise to address it and and I think that's the beauty of it because European CME forum has the or it's very quickly became a community practice and so we are parts of each other's personal and professional learning networks and so we have to be able to help
each other and and so that's why I love that session and some years we we we're very busy and inundated with questions other years we did such a good job conference that nobody had a question but we don't want to leave any question behind absolutely and um yeah so that's that's the
meeting that'll be 17 ECF and um and we will we will have a new president oh yes the time it starts you know that's the thing you gene that I always think about every four years yeah the week of ECF is our US presidential election yeah every every we have everybody there
in the room sometimes hearing who won this year it's going to be just the day before uh so it it'll be very interesting yeah it will be it will be fantastic well Lawrence thank you so much for uh for going through the meeting like this today um it's uh it's great to have uh
well I hope people listening in find this useful sort of a single place to actually give them a good idea of uh how we approach the meeting yeah it's always nice to have others listen to our therapy excellent all right well thanks very much and see you in mid-rid
he adios you can register for the 17th annual European CME Forum at cmeforum.org slash 17 ECF if you complete the annual CME survey you'll also receive a 10% discount in appreciation for your contribution registering for 17 ECF will give you access to the complete archive of the 16th annual
European CME Forum consisting of all the plenary sessions with over 14 hours of CME CPD content from a faculty of 40 experts in European and global CME CPD more information on the upcoming 17th annual European CME Forum and this year's JECME special collection can be found on our website cmeforum.org thank you for listening and join us for more episodes as we explore all things cme cPD