Staff from Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar (WCM-Q)’s Division of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) provided valuable input to the fifth annual meeting of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), recognised as the leading accreditation body in the US.
The Chicago-based ACCME invited Deema al-Sheikhly, director of medical education and CPD at the WCM-Q, to participate as a member of the Steering Committee of the “ACCME 2021 Annual Meeting: Embracing Change” event, which took place online over three days.
Al-Sheikhly also took part in a panel discussion at the event titled *Advancing the Research Agenda, in which she spoke alongside other education leaders on ways to facilitate participation of accredited continuing professional development professionals in scholarship and research that improves educational programmes and promotes inclusiveness across health professions and organisational settings.
Along with fellow WCM-Q CPD members – continuing professional development manager Laudy Mattar and assistant CPD director Dr Phyllis Navti – al-Sheikhly presented a workshop at the ACCME event, titled *A team-based approach to online modality during a pandemic.
The workshop discussed the CPD team’s response to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, which involved rapidly migrating events to online platforms and developing new content to meet the evolving needs of healthcare professionals in the pandemic.
Al-Sheikhly and Mattar then delivered a second workshop, titled *Rapid transformation during a crisis: The value of a business continuity plan.
Al-Sheikhly said: “Continuing professional development has been of critical importance during the crisis, helping healthcare professionals access the latest information about Covid-19 and the evolving best practices for effective containment, prevention and management of the disease.”
“We are very happy to have been able to facilitate these processes and to have had the chance to share our experiences with other CPD professionals through the ACCME annual meeting,” she added,
Dr Thurayya Arayssi, the senior associate dean of Medical Education and Continuing Professional Development, said: “The sudden emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the quickly changing nature of the crisis presented a great challenge to continuing professional development professionals everywhere.”
“The fact that our experiences of rapidly pivoting to online delivery and successfully developing new, high-quality content about Covid-19 and other medical areas for healthcare professionals have been of use to the participants of the ACCME 2021 Annual Meeting is very pleasing indeed,” she added.