UC Davis Center for Continuing Nursing and Medical Education

The UC Davis Health System is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to sponsor continuing medical education for physicians. The only nationally credited program in the area, UC Davis Continuing Medical Education was recently re-accredited until 2001. The Continuing Medical Education department makes service to Californians a high priority. Since 1973, Continuing Medical Education (CME) has been an integral part of the educational mission of the UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center. The CME educational mission is to provide physicians and other health professionals with high quality continuing medical education that enables them to provide an improved level of health care to the population of Northern California as well as other health professionals throughout the United States attending our programs. Depending on need, resources, specialty, and department and program goals, the program serves local, regional, national, and international audiences as well, although the primary focus is Northern California.

Continuing Medical Education offers a variety of traditional courses (classroom lectures and workshops) for the California physician in virtually every field of medicine, including therapeutics, new surgical techniques, diagnostic technologies, specialty courses, telemedicine, managed care education, bioethics and many in-depth subspecialty review courses for the primary care physician. Such courses include those in ophthalmology, cardiology, gastroenterology, oncology, related, infectious disease, and diabetes.

To meet the rapidly changing need of health care professionals, CME continues to explore new learning/communications technologies, including courses on the Internet. Extensive Grand Rounds education is also available for the Northern California physician. To date, the UC Davis Health System offers a total of 47 Grand Rounds Courses in auditoriums at both the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, and on the UC Davis Campus. UC Davis Health System Grand Rounds are accredited for Category 1 credit as well. Continuing Medical Education also offers a variety of tutorials for individualized physician learning. Currently, Category 1 CME credit is available for tutorials in ultrasound, interventional radiology and hospice care.

In July 1995, the Office of Continuing Medical Education merged with the Center for Nursing Education to become the Center for Continuing Nursing and Medical Education. The merge has enabled our administrative unit to utilize educational resources to provide the most efficient and up to date CME programs in the area.  An example is the audience response system, a touch pad system that enables CME participants to measure their personal learning outcomes at the program. This device is used for the majority of our primary care courses as well as specialty programs.