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UTHSCSA
DEAN’S MESSAGE
UT SCHOOL OF MEDICINE UPDATE:
CME OFFERINGS BRING THE LATEST MEDICAL
INFORMATION TO SAN ANTONIO
By Francisco González-Scarano, MD
Continuing medical education (CME) is a critical component of
every physician’s career. With the comprehensive and broad range
of resources available to San Antonio area physicians through the
UT School of Medicine at San Antonio (SOM), information on the
latest advances in virtually any aspect of medicine is easily accessible
close to home.
The SOM’s CME office serves SOM faculty, but as one of the few
accreditors in the area, it is also a valuable resource for the entire med-
ical community, delivering a wide variety of educational options and
the CME credits necessary for maintaining medical licenses. The
SOM’s access to clinical research and a wide range of collaborations
with physicians from the community and with national and interna-
tional experts, offers a wealth of educational opportunities to healthcare
professionals.
The School has had a CME program for almost 50 years. Today the
program is stronger than ever, with greatly expanded offerings. Since
2010 the CME Office has been led Jan Patterson, MD, MS, CMQ,
Associate Dean of Quality and Lifelong Learning and Professor of
Medicine and Infectious Diseases. During her tenure, the number of
CME activities has increased by nearly 50 percent; 147 are planned
for this year. The CME program facilitated 43,686 learner interactions
in 2015, including 30,420 physician interactions and 13,266 interac-
tions with other healthcare professionals such as nurses and pharma-
cists. The School facilitated 2,596 credit hours last year, compared to
542 for the average ACCME accredited provider.
The growth in activity stems in part from new programs. One ex-
ample is a Clinical Safety and Effectiveness (CS&E) course that pro-
30 San Antonio Medicine • August 2016
vides healthcare professionals with the skills, tools and knowledge
needed to improve quality and patient safety. This project-based course,
which began in 2008, has become an integral part of the CME pro-
gram. It is offered twice each year and consists of eight eight-hour days
over six months. Graduates of the CS&E include faculty, administra-
tors and staff from the School of Medicine, Dental School, and our
hospital partners: University Health System, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa
Children’s Hospital and the South Texas Veterans Health Care System.
The School’s CME program is also successful because it is highly re-
sponsive to the needs of the local medical community; from providing
convenient online courses to help physicians meet Ethics and Profes-
sional Responsibility CME requirements to bridging gaps in the
knowledge and skills of practicing physicians.
For example, nationally renowned physician Nilam J. Soni, MD,
is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the School’s
new Critical Care Ultrasound Education Center. As a leader in in-
tegrating point-of-care ultrasound into clinical medicine on a local,
national and international level, Dr. Soni recognized that training
for this increasingly important technology was not widely available
regionally or even nationally. He designed a program to train clini-
cians in ultrasound procedures, and the CME staff helped accredit
the course and provide the logistical support to make the training
available to physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and
nurses, providing hands-on experience in this increasingly important
technology while earning CME credit.
As part of the CME Office’s mission to support the medical com-
munity’s educational needs, Dr. Patterson is chair of the Texas Statewide