What a Difference a Year Makes

Not surprisingly, the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affair’s (CEJA) Report on Industry Support of Professional Education in Medicine, prompted strong and varied reactions, when they circulated a draft last year. (To read AAMSE’s official reaction to the CEJA Report click here). Some responders aimed their heaviest criticism at the process CEJA used - it afforded little time for meaningful input before CEJA submitted it to the AMA’s House of Delegates for review. (At the end of the day, the report died a quiet death on the delegate floor.)

The issue of industry support for professional education in medicine is as relevant today as it was last year – if not more so. So, CEJA is again drafting a report for this year’s AMA’s House of Delegates Annual Meeting. The good news is it looks like CEJA listened to the complaints! CEJA, along with the AMA’s Council on Medical Education, reached out to the CME community early in the process by inviting key stakeholders to a facilitated discussion in late February. Kudos go to Regina M. Benjamin, MD, MBA and Claudette C. Dalton, MD, chairs respectively of CEJA and the Council on Medical Education, for making sure that, this year, stakeholders had time to consider the issues and provide input.

Invited stakeholders included the ACCME, the Alliance for CME, AAMSE, CMSS, PHARMa, and various medical societies, among others. Each organization’s representative was asked to share responses to the following questions:

1. When is conflicted expertise essential in CME? How can we tell when it is no longer needed?
2. What unique challenges do you as a stakeholder face regarding CME?
3. How can we ensure that medicine sets the agenda for CME overall so that it meets the needs of patients and physicians rather than the interest of commercial support?
   

How would you answer these questions? Leave your responses in the comments section below.

And check back later, when Shelly Rodrigues, AAMSE’s representative to this meeting and chair of the Medical Education Leadership Forum will share AAMSE’s response and her meeting take-aways.