CAPM&R Continuing Professional Development Committee
Report for June 2001 – June 2002

The committee met twice at the Annual meeting in Halifax and no further face to face meeting has occurred since until Friday of this Annual Meeting in Hecla. There continues to be a good amount of activity this past year, including many telephone calls, emails and paper inquires that have been responded to.

We do have terms of reference and this is to be re-circulated. Membership is listed below. Dr. Judy Trotter has agreed to take the position of Vice-Chair. Dr. Denyse Richardson will continue in the role of Chair of the committee until June 2004 to allow a reasonable overlap in a relatively new committee and large new program, CPD.

Accreditation Provider Status allows for CAPM&R to sponsor their own educational activities (internal approval system) as well as approve applications submitted for Section 1, Group Learning Activities, for medical and non-medical groups educational activities. (external approval system). It was approved at last years Annual Meeting, upon the recommendation of the CPD Committee, that a $300 fee be levied to accredit programs under Section 1, for those education programs with a direct connection to a member of CAPM&R versus $500 for an application without a connection. It was decided that a minimum connection would be a CAPM&R member on the program planning committee. It was felt that this would encourage applications to come into CAPM&R, which will be a source of revenue (likely increasing as time goes on). It was also passed that the fee to industry for co-sponsorship would be $750, which is somewhat lower than most of the other National Specialty Societies (NSS). However, CAPM&R did not meet the requirement (Principle 8) for co-sponsorship as an Accredited Provider and although this was felt to be a “large can of worms” to open last year, further work is ongoing and within the next month or so, a further submission to the Office of Professional Development (OPD) at the RCPSC should meet the requirements. Needs Assessment and evaluation were the other two areas that were provisionally approved and with the work of Dr. Karen Ethans and the Scientific Program Committee, this should now be approved by the RCPSC as fully compliant. Evaluation is also felt to be at the stage that the RCPSC OPD committee accrediting Providers should award full compliance.

Six applications were reviewed and approved for Section 1 accreditation. There are now five reviewers for external applications. Further process information and details regarding information required in the applications will soon be posted to our CAPM&R website.

It was suggested that a workshop on PLPs be offered at a future Annual Meeting. This will need to be assessed as a need.

As a long term project, it was acknowledged that the CPD Committee should play a role in a SAE process, which would also satisfy a future requirement of Section 1 accreditation (#3)

Respectfully submitted,
Denyse Richardson, Chair

Present committee membership is as follows: (any other volunteers are welcomed)