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| A study group in the dining hall at Harvard University's Currier House. |
While it’s
possible to purchase a course to prepare for the certified continuing medical education professional (CCMEP) exam, it can also be a lot of
fun to form your own study group. As a bonus, you’ll have a chance to make
friends while you practice adult learning principles.
Here’s an easy
step-by-step guide to help you get started:
1) Announce
to your local colleagues that you are forming a study group for the CCMEP exam.
Specify a start date, and begin recruiting members. Social media like Facebook,
LinkedIn, or Twitter are ideal for this purpose.
2) Set
a deadline for people to contact you, and make sure they know space is limited.
Stop recruiting when you have reached 6 or 8 members. Too many people will make
your group hard to manage; too few and your group won’t be able to function
without full attendance.
3) Arrange
the time and place for your first meeting. A casual restaurant that is
centrally located would be ideal. Try to pick a night the restaurant isn’t too
busy – your group might tie up a large table for several hours.
4) Before
the first meeting, read up on principles of adult learning from the content
outline published by the National Commission for Certification of CME Professionals (NC-CME). Prepare a brief lesson to
share what you’ve learned.
5) Distribute
copies of an agenda along with the content outline. Allow plenty of time at
this first meeting for people to introduce themselves and explain why they want
to take the exam. To set a light-hearted tone, include some ice breaker
activities. One idea that works well is a brief “show and tell” session, where
everyone brings an object related to an adult learning challenge they have
successfully mastered. Allowing each person to boast a little will build
self-confidence.
6) Bring
along a partially filled out sheet of paper titled “Our Learning Charter.” (Malcolm
Knowles, an important adult learning theorist, would definitely have approved
of this.) At your first meeting, write down the group’s answers to the
following questions: a) what is our name? b) what is our chief learning goal? c)
when do we hope to learn it? d) what resources will we use? e) who will teach us? f) how will we know
when we reach our goal? g) how will we
celebrate success? Invite everyone present to sign the charter, and remember to
record the date.
7) Sketch
out a calendar for future monthly meetings. These can be in person, over the
phone, or via webinar. Divide the content outline up into chunks, and assign
one chunk per meeting. Ask for
volunteers to teach the various chunks to the rest of the group.
8) Assign
homework. For one person, the homework will be to prepare next month’s lesson.
For everyone else, the homework will be to dream up 10 to 20 multiple choice
questions that might appear on the exam.
9) Ask
for a volunteer to briefly review a helpful study resource at each meeting.
This might be a book, journal, or Web site. The NC-CME has produced a
peer-reviewed list of professional books and journals that can be downloaded
for free – it’s a great place to start.
10) For your group’s
last meeting, pool all of your imaginary test questions into a single, humongous
list. Distribute the mock test to members for review before they take the exam.
You may need a 3-ring binder for all the questions and other helpful review
material you collect. When you take the real test, you’ll be pleasantly
surprised how much you have learned. Champagne, hors d’oeuvres, and dinner at a
nice restaurant can be a great way to celebrate when a member earns the CCMEP
credential.
