For the first time, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education has awarded the UConn School of Medicine accreditation with commendation.
The distinction puts UConn’s medical school in a select group, as only 35 percent of American CME organizations have commendation status. It’s the ACCME’s highest level of accreditation.
“This reflects our state-of-the-art educational programming with educational and compliance rigor from our CME office,” says Dr. Suzi Rose, senior associate dean for education. “We are committed to excellence in education across the continuum of medical education and to fostering a culture of high quality educational offerings that promote lifelong learning, active learning and innovative educational pedagogies and programming.”
The ACCME oversees all continuing medical education for physicians and nurse practitioners for the entire country. There are an estimated 2,000 ACCME-accredited entities, academic and non-academic, that are credentialed by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education.
Dr. Leighton Huey, Christine McNally, Amy King and Barbara Caron led the UConn Health CME office in preparation for the ACCME’s site visit, including a review of all programs approved for granting accredited CME credit as part on an intensive self-study.
“The main issues involved in the review were having the Office of Community and Continuing Medical Education assure that each department or division or course where continuing medical education is involved based its educational offerings on the educational needs of its learners, and that the educational programs are free from commercial bias,” says Huey, professor of psychiatry and associate dean for community and continuing medical education.
The accreditation with commendation from the ACCME is good through July 2021.
