Joint Sponsorship Information
Continuing Medical Education Program Mission Statement
Purpose
The AANS aims to achieve excellence in continuing medical education (CME) through educational activities built on evidence based medicine and adult learning principles. The AANS CME program provides activities to meet the participants’ identified education needs and to support their life-long learning towards a goal of improving neurosurgeon’s competency skills with a measurable result. The AANS sustains a rigorous program of continuing medical education that impacts the provision of health care in neurological surgery and related sciences by focusing on relevant curricula taught by renowned neurosurgical and related neuroscience faculty.
Content
The content of the activities sponsored by AANS is concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of disorders that affect the entire nervous system including the spinal column, spinal cord, brain and peripheral nerves. The scope of activities involves the body of knowledge and skills generally recognized and accepted by the profession in the following subspecialties:
- Spine
- Tumor
- Pain
- Cerebrovascular
- Trauma
- Pediatrics
- General Neurosurgery
- Functional & Stereotactic
Target Audience
The AANS is the organization that speaks for all of neurosurgery. The AANS is dedicated to advancing the specialty of neurological surgery in order to promote the highest quality of patient care.
With that in mind, the AANS CME program is designed for national and international general neurosurgeons, neurosurgical specialists, residents and fellows, and other neurosurgical health professionals.
Types of Educational Activities
The AANS CME program delivers a broad spectrum of diverse educational activities for life-long neurosurgical learning that include:
- Live Activities (i.e., national meetings; regional courses; workshops; web conferences)
- Enduring Materials (i.e., CD-ROMS; videos; books)
- Internet CME (i.e., learning presentations; case-studies)
- Manuscript Review for Journals
- Journal-Based CME
The AANS participates in joint sponsorship relationships with AANS constituencies when consistent with the CME program mission and in compliance with the ACCME Essentials and Standards.
Expected Results of our CME Program
As a result of these educational activities, the AANS cultivates the continuing professional development of health professionals. The activities are intended to enhance physician and other health care professionals' training and improve their competence level for the purposes of enhanced patient care. The AANS CME program is assessed to determine its impact in maintaining and improving the competence of neurosurgical healthcare professionals. Assessment strategies include the use of member survey data; pre- and post-activity evaluation, self-assessment and outcomes measurement.
Assessment tools are selected based upon the educational intervention, needs assessment, individual learning objectives, and available resources. The results of CME activities sponsored by the AANS are assessed as follows:
- For Live Activities, satisfaction, pre- and post-activity competency assessment, and self reported change in behavior
- For Enduring Materials, satisfaction, post-activity competency assessment, and self reported change in behavior
- For Internet Activities, satisfaction, post-activity competency assessment, and self reported change in behavior
Approved by AANS MOC/CME Committee
5.3.09