EBAC has started the initiative „More points for higher quality“ about two years ago.
Based on the results of participants’ feedback it can reasonably be assumed that quality of CME/CPD accreditation in general is good or very good. Nevertheless, the current system does not allow to distinguish between educational excellence and the usual level of acceptable quality.
Thus, this EBAC initiative tries to find criteria to award educational excellence with more points than granted usually, based on time of attendance.
Regarding the framework the EBAC Advisory and Reviewing Committees (ARC) had already decided that the criteria to be defined have to
- have a high likelihood for a major achievement
- be clearly and easily administrable and
- have a low potential of misuse.
Since changes in patient outcome will be difficult to be shown for a single CME modality, the ARCs had also decided to concentrate on the immediate or medium-term educational effectivity of a CME/CPD activity, giving place to variables like interactivity or sustainability to be considered.
EBAC now has identified a simulation course in coronary interventions (“DACH-BOSS” course, see EBAC events calendar), which fulfils the following criteria:
- represents the best suitable educational scenario (in case of a simulation course to train for coronary interventions this is more or less self-evident)
- based on expert defined quality criteria
- proven increase in effectivity
Furthermore, the organisers must be willing to conduct an extended evaluation, tailored to this type of event.
In a pilot phase EBAC will award
- the usual number of points, according to the EBAC accreditation rules and based on duration of the event
- 1 additional CME point for every unit, which meets all of the following criteria:
- total duration of 3 h (min.) with
- a practical exercise: theory ration of at least 2:1 and
- a tutor – participant ration of 1:3.
EBAC would like to stimulate also other organisers of simulation courses in coronary interventions to join this pilot project.