The importance of continuing medical education: Orthopedics Today Hawaii 2011

Issue: January 2011

ByDouglas W. Jackson, MD

Douglas W. Jackson

Orthopedics Today’s annual courses started for our readers in 2004 in New York. We had three successful meetings in the city and I found them to have excellent content, speakers and interactions with the attendees. These were exciting meetings to plan and attend. In 2008 moved our successful educational format to Hawaii which offered reasonable rooms, comfortable meeting facilities in a beautiful setting.

We subscribe and are committed to the best continuing medical education (CME) we can bring to you. Our goal is to assist physicians in their maintenance of competence, challenge their thinking and offer new knowledge to improve quality medical care for patients and their communities. We adhere to the process of disclosing any potentially conflicting financial relationships for faculty members. By participating in Orthopedics Today Hawaii 2011, you can earn up to 23.25 AMA PRA Category 1 credits.

This year, in Kauai, will be the fourth Orthopedics Today Hawaii meeting coming after our first year in Maui in 2008 and 2009 and 2010 on the Big Island. More than 400 of you reading this column will be at our meeting and hopefully the rest of you will consider joining us in the years ahead.

For the past 7 years, this meeting has been professionally and personally satisfying and I have enjoyed the positive educational interactions with our faculty and attending colleagues. The meeting was designed to be the type I would like to attend and the faculty chosen as experts whom I want to know and hear what they have to say. The speakers are doing good clinical work, publishing their results and are involved in evaluating their patients and long-term outcomes.

The faculty, besides being good speakers, enjoy interactions with the attendees and at times can be quite clever and entertaining in the panel discussions. These interactions have always enhanced our course and are supplemented with our audience response system. This ability to survey our attendees and faculty allows instantaneous feedback on their experience and approach to different clinical settings.

Our Banyan Tree Gatherings at the end of the day with faculty and colleagues have been another successful part of our meetings. During these designated gatherings the attendees can have one-on-one interactions with faculty about the day’s presentations or seek advice on challenging cases. I have learned a great deal from these informal gatherings; almost as much as from attending the formal presentations.

We determine the topics for the subsequent year’s program through surveying and feedback from individual discussions that occur during this year. For example, attendees last year suggested going back to one-track lectures instead of using two tracks as we have done the past 3 years. In addition, half of our attendees indicated they are not that interested in lectures on surviving in private practice. They indicated that they are salaried physicians, either in the military, foundations or other institutions, or close to retirement and prefer not to attend these lectures. For those who do wish this subject matter, we obtained CME credits this year for our practice management session under Jack Bert, MD’s capable leadership. For those in traditional private practice, you cannot give quality care if you cannot keep your office open. Their afternoon is practice management Session practical, focused and filled with shared experiences that should benefit those who attend. Remember, as long as private practice survives and thrives, it makes all the different working settings better for our colleagues.

The attendees are invited to bring their spouses or significant others to an enjoyable and educational afternoon in a relaxed setting to examine their marriage, careers and how stress in their lives impacts them professionally. While this session is not approved for AMA PRA Category 1 credit, our speakers, John D. Kelly IV, MD, and his wife Marie Sakosky-Kelly, RN, make it a worthwhile discussion and many find it thought provoking and a good check on the balance in their lives.

Certain members of the faculty have helped organize the different areas of the program and I wish to thank them: Thomas P. Schmalzried, MD, (joint replacement); Richard F. Kyle, MD, and David C. Templeman, MD, (trauma); William N. Levine, MD, ( shoulder); and Jack M. Bert, MD, (practice management and sports medicine). These special individuals have contributed significantly to designing our program content and faculty selection.

This year’s course has our largest attendance as we will continue to make every effort to present the highest quality education in a pleasant environment. We will learn from our attendees how to alter next year’s to reflect many of their ideas.

I look forward to the quality family time before and after the meeting and interactions with colleagues — both old and new friends.

Aloha for 2011.

Douglas W. Jackson, MD, is chief medical editor of Orthopedics Today. He can be reached at Orthopedics Today, 6900 Grove Road, Thorofare, NJ 08086; e-mail: OT@slackinc.com.