Getting the Most Out of Your Continuing Medical Education Classes

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AUTHOR:
Neil Baum, MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Urology, Tulane Medical School, New Orleans, LA

Author, Marketing Your Clinical Practice-Ethically, Effectively, and Economically, Jones Bartlett Publishers

Have you ever attended a meeting and thought that there were several ideas that you planned to implement as soon as you returned to the office only to find that nothing was accomplished when you got back on the practice treadmill? Well, that can all change if you have a plan of action that you take to each meeting. You take the few ideas that you want to use or try and then commit those ideas to paper and give yourself deadlines for accomplishing those actions. A sample of an action plan is shown below. We also suggest that your staff complete the form when they attend a meeting and bring back their to-do list and what they plan to accomplish within the practice. 

Bottom line: An idea is like a slippery fish. Unless you stab it with a pencil and put the ideas down on paper, they will slip away. Using a post-meeting action plan is one of the easiest ways to take an idea from the meeting and see that the idea take root. 

“Action plan” sample:
 
Two things I learned from the meeting:
 1.
 2.
 
What will we implement in the practice in the next 30 days:
 
Who will be assigned to implement the project?
 
How will we measure the results of the new project?
 
What are the outcomes we could like to achieve?