CME-Where to Find It

In my last post, I threw down the gauntlet with a bunch of questions about CME that I need answered. The first one I'm going to address is where to get CME. These are the resources I've found:

Psychiatrist.com

This is the site for The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. I've always thought of this as a throwaway journal. I'm not even sure what list I'm on that allows me to receive copies of it. But the link takes you to a page that includes JCP, as well as The CME Institute, and some Neuro sites. The CME Institute is pay dirt. You need an account at psychiatrist.com, and then you can link to a plethora of material, all with free CME. And really not bad, if somewhat commercially biased. It even includes some self-assessment activities (more on what that means in a later post).

The one glitch I've found is that if you just click on the link that takes you directly to CMEinstitute.com, It's hard to find the extensive list of CME activities. It's much easier to get to the CME from the psychiatrist.com homepage, by clicking on the little "All CME Activities" link under CME Institute.

Or you can just use my link: All CME Activities. Also, a nice addition would be an iphone/ipad app.

The Carlat Report

This is a paid monthly newsletter that's worth paying for. First of all, they don't take money form Big Pharma, or any other commercial source. This means no ads, and little, if any commercial bias.

You get 12 CME category 1 credits per year, all taken online, although the questions are included in the hard copy. They also offer pretests, a relatively recent addition, in order to satisfy self assessment criteria. You take the pretest, which doesn't count, to see how much you know before you read the newsletter. Then you get your pretest score, along with the correct answers. Ostensibly, you go on at that point to read the report, and finally take the post-test, which is the same as the pretest, and for which you receive credit. In other words, you don't need to actually read the report to get all the answers right, which is annoying, but part of the deal with the genius of self-assessment.

That said, it's worth reading, anyway. The articles are well written, well-researched, and informative, and at the end of each-this is my favorite part-they give you the "TCPR take", their opinion of what the bottom line is. So you can cut through the nonsense and try to make good clinical decisions.

The Carlat Psychotherapy Report

New in 2012, this is a spin-off the the Carlat Report. It gives you 10 CME credits per year, all in topics involving psychotherapy. It costs $89 per year, with a $59 introductory rate. It employs the same format and standards as the original Report, and if therapy is a large percentage of your practice, as it is in mine, it's worth it.