andersenpa Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 I was reading an email from the AAPA for a CME event. It mentioned that the conference was "designed specifically for PAs". do we really need this? If we practice medicine..... And we are expected to meet the same standard of care as our physician colleagues.... then why are our CME events not "designed" just as they would be for a physician audience? This may be my bias, but when I read "designed for PAs", I hear one thing- "dumbed down". We don't need the Cliff Notes version of CME.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Febrifuge Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 At the SEMPA conference a few months back, I appreciated the MD lecturer who addssed this. He said, "hey, look, this is the exact same lecture I give to residents and staff docs, but I think you can handle it. I don't see anyone out there wearing helmets. You don't travel to work on the short bus." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator ventana Posted June 29, 2011 Moderator Share Posted June 29, 2011 Unless a PA specific conference appears amazing I tend to go for the MD/DO route for CME - went to many different talks and lectures when I first got out of school and the PA's one's seemed to skim over the "interesting" points.... Granted I enjoy the esoteric and fringe knowledge and that is what I see CME providing once you are established in a field - right out of school I can see the benefit of PA specific CME, but after you get up to speed I gravitate towards MD/DO cme.... just trying the NEJM this summer and although some of the info is not relevant to me, the articles that are relevant are great... makes me think really hard..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmj11 Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 As the co chair of the PA/NP wing of the American Headache Society, there was a movement to create our own parallel conference to the general Headache meeting. I thought it was a bad idea for the same reason. It communicates that we need a dumbed down section. I can see workshops dealing with special NP-PA issues (insurance coverage, billing issues, legal issues) but not a special medical CME. BTW, I lost out and we did do a parallel conference. Fortunately for me, I was in Nepal when it happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acebecker Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 About 2 months ago I completed a hospitalist rotation and during my rotation one of my MD preceptors said, "You think more like an MD than a PA." My only response was, "All PAs think like MDs... We're trained to and we're supposed to." This is a doc who has worked with many PAs in the past, so I was really confused by his comment. In the end, we are trained in the same model and we should always train in the same model. While we don't train to the same level as MDs initially (as a student I don't know everything that an MD knows, admittedly) we are expected to function at the same level, especially in primary care, over time. We won't get there if we short change our continuing education. Not that any of this is news or hasn't already been said - I just wanted to chime in with my experience. Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Scoufalos Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 I'll say this... 5 or 6 years ago, I went to a GI CME conference sponsored by the AGA that was "geared towards" midlevels working in GI. Never again! It was so watered down, I was not only bored to tears and angry at the waste of my time and money, but also rather offended. It was barely even school-level stuff (not to offend students) - nowhere approaching a level of any kind of utility to someone practicing with even a semblance of autonomy in an IM subspecialty. I really blasted it on the evaluation forms, which I am usually, and probably overly-, generous on. Just a brief rant. They still run it, and maybe it's gotten a lot better since, but I'm not going to personally find that out. What a waste of a week! Good thing it was in B'more and I commuted from home, or there'd been hell to pay... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarian Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Well... I think they have their place. That place seems to be focused in specialty medicine with CME specifically "designed for PAs" targeting either new grads or those new to that specialty. Especially if its in a specialty where the SP and PA have divergent duties.... and the PAs are limited in what they do compared to what the Physicians do... due to restictive laws. While I can see the utility in studying everything my SP knows... If I am only allowed legally to perform 30% of what my SP does... I just don't think I need to spend the better part of a week at a Conference listening to monologues about the 70% of the specialty that I won't ever be invovlved with... except to arm myself for the esoteric theoretical debate that me and my SP engage in for office sport. But hey... thats just me... YMMV Contrarian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qkwan Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 I went to two AAPA national conferences before I graduated, and I thought is was great just to be around so many PAs and talk with them about issues specific to practicing as a PA. I didn't feel like the lectures were "dumbed down" but I was just a student, so who knows. I am going to an ortho conference this fall specifically for PAs, so we'll see what I think now that I've graduated--though that wasn't that long ago... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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