Nicklaus Children's Hospital's mission is to “inspire hope and promote lifelong health by providing the best care to every child”. As a teaching institution Nicklaus Children's Hospital is committed to supporting the professional and educational needs of its health care providers, and the lifelong learning of the interprofessional team with the aim to provide the best possible care to every child. Continuing medical education (CME) is one of the major ways in which Nicklaus Children's Hospital supports its overall mission.

Nicklaus Children's Hospital is committed to advancing the knowledge, enhancing the competence and performance in practice of clinicians, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes through the design and delivery of high-quality, evidence-based continuing medical education (CME) programs that focus on patient care, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement (i.e. Quality Improvement, patient safety, research), interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, and systems-based practice (i.e. Interprofessional education). The CME programs focus on common practice guidelines, advances in medicine, new medical technology, biomedical research, healthcare quality, patient-centered care, and changes in the health care environment.

The CME Committee utilizes the ACGME/ABMS/ IOM core competencies as a platform for content areas. The contents are developed based on annual and continuous needs assessments for the overall institutional CME program and individual activities. The needs assessment process identifies “gaps” in attendees’ knowledge, competence and/or performance. Other sources of content include hospital-specific or national patient care initiatives, peer-reviewed published literature, re-licensure requirements, maintenance of certification or accreditation, hospital committee-identified gaps or needs for improvement, and various practice and referral patterns. CME activities are planned in the context of desirable physician attributes and core competencies to promote dissemination of high quality practice patterns and serve the best interest of the public. Topics are assigned to the activity that is best suited for its target audience and delivery format. The content of Nicklaus Children's Hospital CME activities includes, but not limited to

a) all aspects of patient care (diagnosis, management, and prevention) of children in the areas of primary and subspecialty pediatric problems, 

b) quality improvement, 

c) medical ethics 

d) faculty development

e) clinical and translational research, 

f) business of medicine and risk management 

g) hot and emerging topics.

Nicklaus Children's Hospital's CME activities are provided to:

• Pediatricians, House Staff physicians, medical students, pediatric subspecialists in medicine & surgery

• Pediatric researchers

• National and international clinicians

• Allied health and members of multidisciplinary/interprofessional teams

• Parents/family representatives

Nicklaus Children's Hospital offers a range of CME activities including the following:

• Regularly scheduled series (RSS), e.g. Grand Rounds, Faculty Development, Tumor Board, Radiology Conference, Community-Based Educational programs, and Trauma and Cardiology Conferences

• Live Courses: e.g. General Pediatric & Pediatric Critical Care Board Review Courses, Pediatric Post Graduate Course (PPGC)

• Virtual/e-learning/online education – This includes live transmission of courses and/or archived/video-on-demand enduring materials

A complete list of our live activities can be seen here.

The expected result of Nicklaus Children's Hospital's CME is to:

• Improve physician competence measured by outcome assessment (including knowledge, skills and attitudes)
• Improvement in performance-in-practice through assessment of intent of behavior change and implementation of practice change
• Improved patient outcomes through self-reported improvement or quality improvement data or EMR data when feasible. It is also hoped that as clinicians improve their competence and performance, this will translate into improvement of patient outcomes meeting ultimately the hospital’s and health system’s mission to “inspire hope and promote lifelong health by providing the best care to every child”.