Funny Vet

Saturday Jan. 16th 8 CE hours Equine Medicine emphasis

In this last segment, let’s discuss a process that has been implemented in keeping track of CE credits.  Now, this won’t be inclusive as I’m not conversant in what all vet conferences are doing in this matter, but speaking more to what I have experienced at NAVC in Orlando.  There we are given an identification badge that is then scanned at the door of each veterinary lecture attended which logs (in that mysterious 21st Century electronic way) our hours in the great database in the sky.  Sounds good in theory.  However, (and you know this wouldn’t be my blog without a “however”) watching this process in-action reveals so many holes that it essentially obviates what it is trying to accomplish.

Sunday Jan. 17th 8 CE hours Staff/Team Building Exercises

Let me first, however, express my instinctive resistance to just such flawed procedures.  Year after year surveys come back describing us as the most trusted, most respected, most ethical of groups.  Yet, veterinary leadership does not seem to believe this and feels the need to secure a way to ensure vets are going to lectures and getting their CE credits properly.  It wasn’t that long ago that people attending conferences relied on some crazy old-fashioned notion called the “honor system”.  Bunch of liberal, weirdo, hippie-freaks I’m sure.  I put forward two possibilities as to why this change has occurred.  One, there were some people who weren’t taking advantage of the educational opportunities, fell behind the curve, and were caught being deficient.  The logical course, therefore, is to put a system in place that aims at this lowest-common-denominator of our profession, ignoring the insult it causes to the other 99.9%.  Has no one heard that you can lead a vet to a lecture, but you cannot make him think?  Establishing a tracking system does not necessarily equate to learning occurring.  Possibility number two is that some entrepreneur thought what a great idea it was to gain financially by inventing a “needed” tracking software system for a credulous veterinary group. Because, far be it from the mind of an entrepreneur that the antiquated “honor system” had any merit. I don’t even want to think how much of our registration fees go to feeding this monster.  
Now, I am, in California-parlance, a “good doobie”.  Meaning I go to all the classes I should for both helping me buff the rough spots in my knowledge and to get the proper CE numbers.  Doing what I’m supposed to do but then having to prove my integrity through some fallacious system is what grates me.  I have to question leadership that treats us as presumptive slackers while putting out a conference program whose first forty pages consist of everything you can do other than go to the lectures.

Monday Jan. 18th - 8 CE hours with Fluid Therapy Lab

Let’s examine this CE tracking system.  My first class of the first morning had no one present to scan my badge.  So, according to the system, I didn’t learn anything during that hour.  Might as well not have even gone.  After all, if the system doesn’t log you as present, it must be true.  Seems to me, also, that once you do get scanned in there is no barrier to just walking away, ignorance intact.  During one hour I just went door-to-door, like some rabid Trick-or-Treater, getting my badge scanned.  I ended up accruing enough CE credits to last me until 2032.  Assuming that this system is geared to that negligent 0.1%, I’m sure it would never cross their mind to give their badge to a buddy who’s going to a lecture anyway and getting it scanned as well.
What I found really funny was the lack of confidence that the leadership showed in their own process.  Repeatedly we were told to check our CE log for accuracy.  This was when I discovered that you can manually add or subtract classes yourself.  One guy I spoke to said his list was all messed up, showing he had classes he hadn’t attended, classes he had gone to that weren’t logged, and multiple classes that had been held at the same time, which I explained to him wasn’t impossible as long as you ignored Euclidean geometry and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.  Okay, follow me on this, if the process isn’t even accurate, requiring manual manipulation of the classes attended by the affected participant, isn’t this, defined, the honor system?  And if we agree on that why, then, do we have this ridiculous, unwieldy mechanism in the first place?  We have now turned otherwise respectable,intelligent people into nothing so much as badge-tapping monkeys futilely hitting the feed-bar waiting for some CE manna to be dispensed.

The presumption also is that CE forms a direct correlation with keeping up with current medical trends and thoughts.  Yet you can spend all five days attending business-related lectures.  How are those counted toward CE

Tuesday Jan. 19th 8 CE hours emphasis on Aquatic Medicine

?  Besides the fact that if you purchase the Proceedings books you are basically packing the combined intellectual force of our entire profession in just under five hundred pounds of paper.  Why can’t one just read the allotted number of lectures to fulfill CE?  After all, that’s all a lot of the lecturers do anyway.  And what about the inability to enumerate CE from the contemporary information obtained from interactions in the exhibit hall with the companies and their representatives?  These are, after all, the places making advancements in medicines and techniques we will use in practice.                      Here are some other ideas our veterinary leadership have under discussion to keep us on our toes and compliant:   1) Quizzes at the end of every attended lecture – you must get a passing grade to get the full CE for that class.    2) Badge scanning both entering and leaving restrooms.  If this occurs during lecture times, the time spent in porcelain contemplation is deducted and only fractional CE given.    3) Roving bands of specialists employed to perform spot-checks within six months of the conference.  Similar to business and professional regulation inspectors, veterinarians will be picked randomly to be tested on how much information they have retained.    4) Monetary compensation given to fellow veterinarians who report infractions or abuses of the system.    5) Clients can bring in their pets with surprise disease processes that the vet then has to reference and treat accordingly.  Oh, wait, that’s right.  We do this kind of thing day in and day out already.
Far-fetched you say?  Remember, it was only about ten years ago that the honor system was still considered viable and, well……honorable.

Wednesday Jan. 20th 8 CE hours Wildlife Medicine emphasis

I was particularly upset that it wasn’t until the last day I found out that some lectures are televised.  What?  Really!?  I can watch lectures in my hotel room?  This seems to really subvert the whole badge system!  I mean, if I can do that, coupled with room service, I’ll never have to leave my room.  This would be conference nirvana!  I always thought the lecture hall experience could be accented by having food brought in while lounging in my underwear.  Sweet!  And then I’m already in a more comfortable position for sleeping during certain lectures.  I can’t wait until my next conference!
I continue to use a simple and effective system to track my own CE.  I take the program schedule provided, circle the classes I attend, rip the appropriate pages out at the completion of the conference, staple them together, and file them in a drawer, ready to be retrieved if someone requests them.  In seventeen years no one has asked.  Now that I write this blog, I await the possibility of being audited.