Is CME hours difficult to complete.....and NY CME questions

[Hckyplyr]

Hi Guys,

When I was in pharmacy school, I knew that pharmacists had to complete 45 CE hrs/3yrs. So, 15 CE hours a year if you average it out. Which is nothing compared to PA requirements. For PA's as you all know, its 100hrs/2 yrs. Is this difficult to accomplish? Are these hours accumulated 1hr at a time, or are some things worth multiple credits? Do you typically try to get 1hr CME done weekly, which would only allow you to miss a couple weeks a year? It just seems as though you spend an awful lot of time of CME's. Maybe it's not as bad as I'm thinking?

Also, I was looking over this link, its a couple years old but why are there no CME hours required for MD/DO in NY? They seem to require them in almost every other state, so why is NY exempt? Thanks guys

http://www.medscape.org/public/staterequirements

[unewillow]

I personally don't find the hours difficult to accumulate. All of your certifications (BLS, ACLS, etc.) are multiple credits and you normally need to re-cert at least one of them in that 2 year block. The JAAPA has at least 1 CME each month and they are good for a year, so I tend to let a few months pile up and then take an afternoon and just go through and do all the CME and log it. There are MANY conferences you can attend, most offering around 15+ CME and most employers offer CME money to pay for them. Not to mention, only half (50) of your CME has to be Category I, and Category II can really be anything. Which for most people ends up being journal reading (that doesn't offer CME) and attending lectures or precepting student.

[Hckyplyr]

I personally don't find the hours difficult to accumulate. All of your certifications (BLS, ACLS, etc.) are multiple credits and you normally need to re-cert at least one of them in that 2 year block. The JAAPA has at least 1 CME each month and they are good for a year, so I tend to let a few months pile up and then take an afternoon and just go through and do all the CME and log it. There are MANY conferences you can attend, most offering around 15+ CME and most employers offer CME money to pay for them. Not to mention, only half (50) of your CME has to be Category I, and Category II can really be anything. Which for most people ends up being journal reading (that doesn't offer CME) and attending lectures or precepting student.

Thanks so much. I'm still trying to grasp all the different types of CME. I'm sure it will make more sense the more I do it.

So your saying for going to one conference, you get 15+ credits for a single conference?

By journal reading, do you mean reading the journal articles and taking the quizes at the end, then send them in for grading?

[EMEDPA]

there are category 1 and cat. 2 cme credits.

cat 1 is lecture type material, courses like acls, etc on an hr for hr basis. most cert classes are 16 credits/hrs over 2 days and are done every 2 yrs. so when I do acls/atls/pals/fccs/difficult airway/abls/apls that's a lot of hrs.

also if you attend a week long conference it's easy to rack up 20+ hrs of lecture.

cat 2 is stuff like precepting students, journal reading, writing articles, etc, etc

I generally end up with well over 100 hrs/yr of cat 2 and at least 30 hrs/yr of cat 1.

I'm taking a cert class later this yr that is 76 hrs of cat 1 over 10 weeks.( it's 2 days/week)