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Educators, lecturers not sold on COPE
BOSTON—If the Council for Optometric Practitioner Education (COPE) was designed to be a white knight riding in to simplify the optometric continuing education (CE) review process, not all optometrists are quite ready to be rescued.
While COPE said it is streamlining a cumbersome approval process, many optometric lecturers and academics are refusing to adopt it, asserting that it is an unneeded bureaucracy, and that optometric CE is run smoothly now.
--- Anthony Cavallerano.
Anthony A. Cavallerano, OD, dean of Clinical Sciences at the New England College of Optometry, Boston, said COPE represents another "layer that we have to go through. It implies to the general public: 'What's wrong with you as a profession that you need a regulating body to approve your CE? Can't you do it yourself?' "
Created to cut costs
--- James Vrac.
COPE was instituted by the International Association of the Boards of Examiners in Optometry (IAB) on Jan. 1, said IAB Executive Director James S. Vrac, in response to requests by optometric boards of states and jurisdictions that the IAB create an organization to handle CE course review. Traditionally, for CE approval in a given state, a course must be reviewed by that state's board.
"A lot of these boards of optometry are under pressure from their legislative entities to reduce costs," Vrac said. "One of the burdens the states handle is CE review. Many state board members of the IAB felt it was a wasted, duplicative and unnecessary process to have 57 jurisdictions reviewing material that need only be done by one."
Not only does COPE save the boards time and money, Vrac said, but the CE providers would need to get courses approved by only one central organization, instead of seeking separate approval by different states and jurisdictions.
--- Frank Salimeno.
"The specifics of this are very reasonable for lecturers," said Frank L. Salimeno, OD, a member of the IAB board of directors and the IAB board liaison to COPE. "It is not a credentialing process. It's strictly a review so that all lecturers provide education on a stable format."
COPE's reviewers are volunteers provided by the state boards. In the vast majority of these cases, Vrac said, these reviewers are already performing the same function for their states.
Same approval costs more
--- Leo Semes.
COPE charges a fee per course hour per year, and some object to those fees. Leo P. Semes, OD, director of CE at the University of Alabama in Birmingham School of Optometry (UAB), said, "[Optometrists] ask: 'You've always gotten approval in the past. Why does it cost you more to get the same approval now?' That's a question for which I don't have an answer."
Semes said that since a budget-strapped UAB and other schools cannot support these extra costs, he suggests passing the costs on to the optometrists taking the courses. When asked if COPE could be useful for optometrists, Semes said, "Yes, if you want to pay extra for your continuing education."
Salimeno said that even if the extra cost was passed on to optometrists, it would only be "a dollar, two dollars, maybe not even that."
Semes and others believe that the schools and colleges of optometry--instead of COPE--should assume the role of approving CE. He said that UAB has put together an easy-to-use template that has streamlined the approval process. "If a course was approved by a state, then the state could send that information to the central agency," he said. "It would seem that COPE is almost placing itself as the cart before the horse, in that if they were to collect the approved courses from the states, they could provide the same services that they're talking about charging for up front."
Cavallerano added that the state boards "would be just as happy if the schools and colleges did it as if COPE did it."
However, COPE asserted that having schools approve their own courses is a conflict of interest. "That's about as incestuous as you can get," Salimeno said. "And the schools and colleges of optometry have no statutory authority in the licensing divisions of the United States of any jurisdiction to provide CE certification. Only the boards have that authority."
Much of the resistance to COPE stems from misinformation, said Salimeno. For instance, opponents are suspicious of how the money generated will be used. In its literature, COPE states that it charges $30 per one-hour course, with a $15 fee for each additional hour, and that it will generate, if fully utilized, about $30,000 a year.
Vrac added that COPE fees will "pay for only the administrative work of COPE. If we ever saw a profit projected, we would merely balance our budget again by reducing our fees."
Not all academics oppose it
--- Thomas Lewis.
Resistance to COPE in academic circles in not universal. Thomas L. Lewis, OD, PhD, president of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry and COPE representative to the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry, said that while COPE may not be the best approach, "It's a first step. It's a genuine attempt to try to bring some standardization to continuing education, and we will support it."
The American Optometric Association (AOA) has adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward COPE, said AOA president Donald Jarnagin, OD. "The only education the AOA has is at our annual Congress, and we have decided not to participate with COPE at this time. That's our position. We want to stay neutral and stay out of it."