CME for Acute Care NPs

[galenight, BSN, RN]

I am having trouble finding continuing education for Acute Care NPs. ANCC requires at least 51% of CME be directly related to your specialty. So many conferences are geared mainly toward primary care. I am having an especially hard time find pharmacology credits for acute care. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have tried Medscape, NPACE, plain old googling and many others. Thanks!

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

I agree that most NP conferences, AANP included, are more focused on primary care. The sessions that they have on Acute Care tend to be oversimplified and not useful to our practice. In what specialty do you work in? Are you willing to travel for CME. I personally love to travel for CME as I can also make a vacation out of it by bringing my spouse.

I work in Adult Critical Care so I seek out CME's that are related to this specialty to update me of changes in current practice and to learn of upcoming issues affecting the field. I look to SCCM for conferences and have attended their annual congress. There are annual CME's sponsored by academic institutions for Hospitalist Medicine providers. I've attended one locally: Management of the Hospitalized Patient. I found it well organized and informative though I'm biased as I work there. Another academic medical center has a similar annual conference: Care of the Complex Hospitalized Patient. The 2014 version already happened so you'll have to wait til next year. There are conferences by ACC if you work in Cardiology. The key is to become a member of the professional organization that represents your specialty.

In terms of Phramacology credits, I prefer to simplify matters by attending one or two Pharmacology CME during the 5-year certification period. There are many CME providers for this including ANCC, Fitzgerald, and even AANP.

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