Preparing a Successful Individual Activity Application for Approval. My name is Dr. LaTanya Thomas. I currently serve as the Continuing Education Manager for the International Association of Forensic Nurses. Joining me shortly for this presentation are Dr. Denise Garee, Dr. Kimberly Messenger, and Annetta Sipes, whom all serve as members of the Education Committee, as well as nurse peer reviewers. Professional nursing demands a dedication to learning. According to the American Nurses Association, attaining knowledge and competence that reflects current nursing practice is a standard of professional performance for registered nurses. The registered nurse meets this standard by participating in ongoing educational activities related to appropriate knowledge bases and professional issues. Quality continuing education prepares the nurse to meet the challenges of rapid changes in knowledge, technology, and societal needs. Before we begin, I'd like to provide our disclosures. The planners, presenters, and content reviewers of this course disclose no conflicts of interest. The International Association of Forensic Nurses is accredited as an approver of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation. The purpose of this presentation is to guide you in developing individual educational activities and to help you apply for approval to award continuing nursing education for those educational activities through the approver unit of the International Association of Forensic Nurses. The learning outcome developed for this presentation is that 80% of participants who review this presentation will increase knowledge of the IAFN approver unit process and increase their confidence in developing and submitting a successful individual activity application. Ultimately, our goal is to help you successfully complete the application for an individual activity so that you may provide high quality continuing nursing education programs for your community and target audience. If you follow us on social media, you may have recently seen advertisement related to our approver unit. The International Association of Forensic Nurses is committed to educational and professional development activities that support evidence-based, high quality care of forensic patients. We are thankful that you are considering our organization to assist you in offering continuing education for your activity. Our application process is affordable, convenient, and very user-friendly. Before we begin conversing about the application process, I want to take a moment to differentiate between the approver unit and provider unit. The ANCC Commission on Accreditation accredits approver units that have demonstrated the capacity to approve and monitor the educational activities of individual activity providers according to ANCC standards. The purpose of the approver unit of the International Association of Forensic Nurses is to approve individual educational activities that meet the standards and criteria of the ANCC's Commission on Accreditation, to establish policy within the guidelines of the ANCC's Commission on Accreditation, and lastly, to monitor the quality, consistency, and operations of the approver unit's programs. As a professional nursing organization, the International Association of Forensic Nurses can approve and provide nursing continuing professional development. Our approver unit affords applicants an opportunity to submit applications to provide continuing nursing education for an individual educational activity. This application can be for a one-time activity or for a two-year approval for unlimited activities. We approve applicants to provide their own C&E for a specific individual activity with a committee structure. Approved applicants are required to keep their records for seven years, and approved applicants provide C&E certificates to their participants. Conversely, we provide our own C&E through our provider unit for our own individual educational activities. We approve our own individual activities with a staff structure. We keep our own records for seven years, and we provide C&E certificates to participants. Before we move into the requirements of the application, I want to begin by defining continuing nursing education. Please note that C&E, or continuing nursing education, is oftentimes used interchangeably with the term nursing continuing professional development. C&E, continuing nursing education, is defined as learning activities intended to build upon the educational and experiential basis of the professional RN for the enhancement of practice, education, administration, research, or theory development to the end of improving the health of the public and RN's pursuit of their professional career goals. So how do you apply? This slide will cover who and what's required. Individuals and or organizations may apply for approval of individual educational activities. However, they must have a nurse planner. That nurse planner must have a minimum of a baccalaureate degree in nursing, must have an active unrestricted RN license, and knowledge of ANCC's COA criteria and IAFN's rules as conveyed in our IEA manual, which relates to our approver unit for the year 2020. Individuals and organizations may apply for approval, but they must also be separate from any commercial entity that produces, markets, resells, or distributes a product used on or by patients. Next is Dr. Denise Garee, who will cover how to begin your application process. Hi, my name is Denise Garee, and I'm going to be presenting the part of our lecture on prior to beginning your application. So before you put it out, before you put your application out, determine which type of educational program it's going to be. Provider directed and provider paced education includes those live face to face or live webinars based on recognized gaps in practice, knowledge, and skills. Content is based on best practice available, delivered using sound educational design methods for active learning and evaluated in measurable terms. There are no expiration dates for live educational events. However, the developer must review content to assure that the gap still exists and that the information that you're giving is current. Your planning committee may choose to move live webinar content into enduring material. And when that is done, there is an expiration date that goes with it. So you have to make sure that you're providing for that with your contact hours. Provider directed learner paced is enduring material. The content is out there. It's really for the learner to determine how long it's going to take for them to get through it. The recognized gaps have to be there, just like it would be in a live event. Follows the same educational standards. Enduring event includes online modules or courses, printed articles, e-books, independent study, virtual simulation, and case studies. Expiration dates are assigned. And once expired, you can't give any of those contact hours out after that. Just like the live content, you have to, the enduring material, you have to look at every three years and make sure that your content is accurate and applicable to present practice. So everything is evidence based practice. Again, if changes are made, then there is an expiration date change as well. Blended uses both types of live and enduring materials, maintaining all accreditation education standards as mentioned before. However, the enduring materials will contain an expiration date. So if the planner provides both live content and assigns learners to complete modules or watch videos and answer questions regarding the reviewed materials for evaluation purposes, the live content will not have an expiration date, but the enduring materials will. That might be combining the two, where they have to watch a webinar, have to attend a webinar or do things prior to attending that webinar. So that would be a blended learning thing. Learning directed at very rare instances. In collaboration with the nurse planner, the learner identifies what their educational needs are, the resources, the content, the outcomes, the evaluation, and the pace. Number of contact hours, again, are awarded according to the same manner we do them. And you're going to, that's going to be discussed later on. So there's really, the only difference is that the learner is making all the decisions on where their learning is going to go. The education planning table still has to be completed and each section would have to be completed by the learner, just as it would as if they were attending some kind of a presentation. Joint providers, accredited providers can collaborate and provide joint educational events, but there can be no commercial interests. Only one joint accreditation provider is considered the lead provider or the provider responsible for compliance with the ANCC accreditation standards. Marketing materials must clearly indicate which person that is, or which responsible party that is, who is going to be awarding those continuing education contact hours. And that's their responsibility. All right, so the educational design process has multiple components to it. Professional practice gap, a planning committee, underlying educational needs, a target audience, educational content, learner engagement, criteria for awarding contact hours, and the evaluation. I'm going to address the professional practice gap, underlying educational needs, and then other members of the education committee will address the remainder of the elements of the educational design process. So the professional practice gap and underlying educational needs. What is the basis for your educational event? Well, that's going to be determined by what your practice gap is, whether it be knowledge, skill, practice, are they doing something incorrectly? Do they not have the knowledge to be able to do it? Or is there something that's stopping them from doing something practice-wise and they don't know how to circumvent or remove the barrier that's preventing the practice from occurring? So it's important that they address the changes, the educational process can address changes in the standards of practice of patient care, problems in practice, and areas for improvement. But keep in mind that the gaps don't always have to be based on clinical practice. They can have educational backgrounds to them, research, or administrative. The gap may also be interdisciplinary in nature, say like the performance of a rapid response team. So all members would be included in the education. However, the only people who are going to get contact hours through the application would be nurses, because that's who we are providing continuing education for. Identifying the educational gap includes looking at the data to identify where the gap exists, thus verifying the need for the planned education. So basically, ANCC wants to know that you didn't just pull this out of your hat and say, okay, we're going to give this education, right? So how do you arrive at identifying your root cause or your underlying educational need of the existing knowledge gap? The analysis of the data needs to be provided in that application. So did you perform a survey? Did you do peer review in chart reviews? Consult on the members of the interdisciplinary care team, receive reports from quality assurance or quality improvement managers, risk management, receive information from community collaborators, or obtain desired educational requests from attendees through another event. So if they filled out an evaluation form and did request something, it would be very smart of you to put on the application that 65% of the attendees who went to such and such educational program requested education on this topic. So then they know that there's a knowledge gap out there because the professionals are telling you, I have a knowledge gap, so let's fill it, right? So the educator should address the educational gap by looking at the differences in your present state, where you are, what the review showed, or what the data showed, and the desired state. Where is it that you really wanna go? What do learners need to know? And this provides a guide for your educational content and your planning. And I'm going to show you some of those examples. Now, don't overthink this process, okay? It is not that hard to come up with, okay? So here's your identified gap. Case reviews identified constancy of documentation, errors and omissions during subjective assessments and injury identification during forensic nursing exam. The root cause, nurses performing the forensic exam admit confusion regarding proper terminology and they feel rushed during the subjective interview. So your gap is knowledge and skills. Present state, 30% error rate on subjective and injury documentation of forensic exams. Your desired state is a reduction of documented errors to less than 10% and increasing the nursing knowledge regarding injury terminology and documentation. So your educational plan might be to review different soft tissue injuries, examination techniques, role play, interviewing skills and documentation, simulate sexual assault and intimate partner violence, interviews using standardized patients. In which case, by the way, if you're going to do that, you have to develop a dialogue, okay? Or a script for both parties actually, or for the one party who is the victim or survivor of the event. And then the nurse would have to go through the motion of what they would normally do. So that's a really good way of doing some of the education is to do it that way. And with virtual stuff, you can actually do it that way now too, because if you had a Zoom presentation and then you had somebody be that standardized patient, you could have questions asked of them of the audience through the Q&A that we have on most of the Zoom things and get your answers that way. So don't let the fact that COVID is keeping us away from each other decrease your ability to teach out there, okay? You still have that ability to do it because you can find those gaps and you can fill those gaps. We're all smart people here. We didn't get to be nurses without being smart. Okay, our second example. Advocates and law enforcement report to the SART members, the sexual assault response team members at their meeting that they can't get sexual assault exams performed at facilities in a timely manner. Survivors wait eight to 10 hours for an ER nurse to free up to perform the exam. What's the root cause? Nurses are not generally trained in performing sexual assault examinations. They do not have adequate number of sane nurses to meet the community needs. Your gap here is knowledge, skills, and practice because they can't do the practice because they have specific focus. And unless they are specifically sexual assault nurses that are on call to do these exams, the priority is the acute person. However, remember that the sexual assault victim is also considered an acute case. So they should not be put aside. That's beside the point. Let's move on to this. Our present state, inadequate number of sane nurses fails to meet the community needs and extended response times of eight to 10 hours. What's our desired state? Meet the standards of care, sanes to arrive within one and a half hours, one to one and a half hours, sorry, of notification to begin sexual assault examination. And add sane trained nurses to facilities throughout the community. So what might be your educational plan? Provide a 40 hour standard sane training course, right? That is basically it. So that's pretty much an easy one to figure out. And I have one more example for you. Identify gap, inability to use forensic photos in prosecutorial cases due to poor picture quality. The root cause, surveyed forensic nurse examiners indicate a lack of experience and confidence in use of camera equipment and alternate light sources. Your gap, again, knowledge and skills. Present state, injury identification and documentation using photography and alternate light sources are of inconsistent quality and unusable in almost 50% of prosecutorial cases. Forensic nurse examiners lack confidence performing the photo documentation of injuries using alternate light sources. Your desired state, increase the clarity of injury documentation using photography and alternate light sources by 35% and increase the forensic nurse examiners confidence in the use of the equipment and alternate light source for injury identification. So your educational plan might be to review photography basics, the purposes of alternate light source during forensics examination, demonstration of skills and simulation using standardized patients because you can moulage them with different things and they can still show. And we all know that there are certain things that will glow under infrared and alternate light sources. So it would be good to put that where a bruise would be so that they can actually see it. Just remember that everything should lead to the determination of educational content and learning outcomes, which will come up shortly. So what are your next steps? Well, determine what education is needed to fill that gap. Who's needed to provide the education? Now, as a planner, you should know who you have as your experts in your hospital or in your community. Who can you pull in to help teach this? Especially if you think about a 40 hour SANE course, you know that you're gonna have to pull in law enforcement advocates, you're gonna have to get the crime lab, you're gonna have to get a lot of people involved in this. So you need to know what your resources are. And what do you have available to you? How long should the program take? Well, a 40 hour one, does it have to be the whole week or can it be two days this week, two days the next week and the last day is a third week or break it up, you know what I mean? But you should have an idea of how long that's gonna take. Will the type of program that you decided on previously when we went through the, sorry, the provider directed provider paced and the provider directed learner paced, are they gonna stay that way or do you have to make some kind of an adjustment because of the type of program and the type of education you wanna do? So that's something that you should look back at and say, okay, yeah, we're gonna do it this way because it works, okay? So always go back and look at that. There's no harm, no foul, because this is all information you pull together prior to putting down on the application. Have all these answers there so that when you go to do the application, you're just filling in the blanks. And really that's all it comes down to, filling in the blanks and giving them the information. Don't forget your logistics, the who, where, when, this is all going to happen. If you have any questions about anything that I have talked about or that any of my colleagues will be talking about, please do not hesitate to contact the Education Committee. We are there to help you and to service you. So if you need any assistance, please reach out. Now that you've had an opportunity to learn more about the educational design process, I'd now like to cover the specifics of what's required in the application for your individual activity. Please keep in mind that the application review process is typically a six-week timeframe and will begin once all required forms and payments are received. So let's review the checklist. And please keep in mind that this checklist is available on our website. The first document that must be submitted is the CE Activity Approval Application and the Application Fee. In addition, the Individual Educational Activity Application, the Applicant Eligibility Verification forms are required, and those two forms are actually available as online forms. Our Educational Planning Table is required and is available in both a PDF and Word document. The CE Agenda for your Educational Activity is required. If your activity is providing three or more contact hours, conflict of interest forms are required for all individuals in a position to control content. And we'll talk a little more about that in just a little bit. But please ensure that that form includes the title, the date of the activity, the role of the individual submitting the COI, any demographic information that's relevant, in addition to if they are a committee member and or a nurse planner. The application must include a participant list and or attendance tracker. This could include your sign-in sheet or describe simply how you plan to track attendance, especially if attendance is one of the criteria that you have established for successful completion of the activity. An evaluation template must be provided, and that should include an evaluation of your learning outcomes as well as your speakers. A CE Certificate sample. This sample should be representative of the actual certificate that attendees will receive once they have completed your educational activity. This sample certificate must include the most current ANCC statement, and I will review that shortly. Any marketing material related to the individual activity must be included and must also include the most current ANCC statement. Disclosure to participants. You must disclose to participants what criteria has been established for successful completion of the individual educational activity. If you recall, the second slide that was provided in this presentation was a disclosure slide. You may be required to provide a presentation handout, slide deck, or PowerPoint based upon the review of the application by the nurse peer reviewer. If applicable, we may require a commercial support agreement, a commercial interest addendum, and if your event is jointly provided, we will require a joint provider agreement, and that document is available upon request. As of January 1, 2020, ANCC recently revised their accreditation statements. For your certificate, please include the following activity approval statement. It should read, this nursing continuing professional development activity was approved by the International Association of Forensic Nurses and accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Centers Commission on Accreditation. For your marketing material, please include a statement related to the fact that your application is being reviewed for approval. The individual activity review in process statement is, this activity has been submitted by the International Association of Forensic Nurses for approval to award contact hours. The International Association of Forensic Nurses is accredited as an approver of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Centers Commission on Accreditation. As mentioned previously, all required forms, information related to fees, frequently asked questions, forms for submission are all located on our continuing education homepage. Again, we are committed to educational and professional development activities that support evidence-based and high quality care of forensic patients. And again, the goal of this presentation and the redevelopment and revamping of our website is to make this a more user-friendly process for applicants. As you can see, the icons, the colored icons represented on this screen provide you with information related to the checklist, required forms, fees, and again, frequently asked questions. This homepage is located at www.forensicnurses.org forward slash page forward slash CE approver. Please keep in mind that individual activity applications must be submitted six weeks prior to the activities presentation, delivery, or launch. Forms that are on this website are available in Word as well as PDF documents. And some of the forms are actually online forms that are easy to access and complete. So, your application has been approved, congratulations. Know that the length of approval is for two years. However, if during that two-year time period, there are changes to the activity, please note that we must receive in writing, you must report in writing, any administrative changes, and that must be done within a 30-day time period. Administrative changes include name, ownership, or structure of the organization, the nurse planner, or if the contact person has changed, again, you must provide that information to us in writing. If there have been substantial changes in learning activities, you must complete and submit another application for approval. For instance, if your content has changed, or the learning outcomes of the educational activity have changed, again, you must complete a new application and submit that for approval. However, if your speaker changes, but the new speaker will present the same content, use the same objectives and timeframes that have previously been allocated, just simply email us and submit your revised agenda and current completed COI, conflict of interest form, for the new speaker. Next, Dr. Messinger will provide information related to developing learning outcomes and educational design. Hi, this is Kimberly Meissner, and I'm going to be talking with you through the developing learning outcomes and educational design. So let's start talking about what are program goals. Program goals are clear statements of the anticipated results to be achieved through education. They also serve as guidelines for developing transfer of learning plans. The program goals are what the educator wants to deliver to the learner. However, learning outcome is a written statement that reflects what the learner will be able to do because of participating in an educational activity. Why exactly is this so important? The learning outcomes and program goals will set the tone for the educational offering. The planning committee should consider a couple of questions when creating program goals. One, is a goal attainable? Two, is a goal meaningful? And three, is a goal clearly communicated to the target audience? So for this particular webinar, we came up with several program goals. For example, participants will be able to synthesize the information provided to produce an accurate and complete application for the approval of providing continuing education for nurses. But what exactly does this all mean? When developing clear program goals and outcomes, it's ideal to ask the following questions. Is there a clear relationship between the objectives, the ideas, the problems, and the needs that have been identified as priority areas? Do the outcomes reflect prior knowledge, experiences, and abilities of the participants? Does the outcome focus on crucial parts of the program? Is the outcome attainable during the timeframe proposed? Does the outcome clearly communicate the proposed outcome or accomplishments? Is the outcome meaningful and will participants understand what they're expected to learn? And most importantly, is the outcome measurable? So developing learning outcomes. Learning outcomes set the tone for the direction for what participants are expected to do and learn during the education activity. There are five categories needed for creating learning outcomes. These include acquiring new knowledge, enhancing cognitive skills, developing psychomotor skills, strengthening or enhancing problem-solving capabilities, and changing attitudes, values, beliefs, or feelings. These learning outcomes create the focus and consistency for the design of the instruction. The statement should be clear to where all participants clearly know what's expected. It's best to avoid unfamiliar words, used words, and usually you should have simplicity when creating these learning outcomes. When developing learning outcomes, they should focus on an opening statement. For example, the participant will, the learner will, the nurse will. Those are some clear-cut opening statements. Next, you'll use the action verb. The action verb describes what is being taught. These can be a variety of action terms. Bloom's Taxonomy is a great resource to use to find action verbs. When constructing the learning objective action verb, make sure the verb matches what is being taught. For example, if you are teaching hands-on physical assessment of sexual assault patient, the action verb that could be used could be demonstrate. This clearly matches the action to what the learning is being taught in the education session. Moreover, if you are asking participants to review case studies to develop a new understanding of a new standard of practice, you may want to select the action verb analyze, comprehend, or recognize. Reviewers will close review these elements to make sure that all the elements being covered are in the program objectives. Here is an example of how we came up with learning objectives for this particular webinar. You can see each of the action verbs clearly articulates the desired learning state. The action verbs differentiate, discern, develop, create, and articulate state the planning committee's intention for the learning outcomes. So for example, at the completion of this webinar, participants will be able to develop learning outcomes that incorporate assessment of identified gaps in knowledge, skills, and practice. Selecting educational techniques can be somewhat of a cumbersome process, but now that we've developed learning outcomes, it's time to consider how the learning techniques will help you deliver the types of information you want to convey to your participants. In order to meet learning outcomes, the education is designed to consider the best instructional technique for the type of learning outcome and method of delivery. Instructional techniques can include lectures, panel discussions, games, simulations, case studies, debates, problem-based learning, reflective practice, and role-playing, just to name a few. When creating instructional techniques, it's important to consider how the educational offering will be delivered. Will this be online, face-to-face, or in-during? The instructional technique should consider the desired learning outcome. For example, if a learning outcome is to demonstrate improved accuracy of documentation of an injury identification during a forensic nursing exam, the selected educational instructional technique may be to incorporate simulation, role-play, or case study, or even a pre- and post-test to observe participants demonstrating this skill. Additionally, it is important to consider the participants' involvement during the education session. Consider how much participants are engaged in the process. Do you want low involvement, which could be just a lecture? Or would you prefer to have high involvement of the participants, which could be through simulation and case analysis? You must consider that there are several types of learning activities. These can include provider-directed, provider-paced, live types of activities. These can consider strategies that will help you gather and evaluate the data. These examples include live presentations or live webinars. There's provider-directed, learner-paced. This is considered in-during. The provider determines certain aspects of the activity, the learning outcome, based off a gap analysis. These can be considered education opportunities that are online, self-paced courses, which the learner must attend. Moreover, there's also a blended aspect. This is both live and in-during. A blended learning activity is a combination of both provider-directed, provider-paced, and learner-paced activities. Again, you must consider the type of information you want to convey to determine the type of activity. There's also learner-directed and learner-paced. This type of activity is anticipated to compromise any portion of the approver unit submissions. This can include and identifies learning resources and selected strategies to allow the learner to be self-directed in their educational process. So once you've created learning outcomes, you decided on a type of activity and how it's going to be delivered, it's important to consider how you plan to measure the expected outcomes. The evaluation outcome and method of evaluation should be relative to the desired learning outcomes of the educational activity. Education and evaluation is also summative at the conclusion of the educational activity. Evaluation methods include assessment of the change of knowledge, skills, and practices of the target audience. Change in knowledge and skills and or practices may or may not occur based on a variety of factors. However, the evaluation should assess for such change. Evaluations are also necessary to be able to collect data used to reflect the barriers in learner change. There are several types of evaluations that can be used to create an understanding of your educational activity. There are short-term and long-term evaluation processes. Short-term evaluative options include how the person or the participant plans to change practice. This can include a post-test, return demonstration, case study analysis, or role play. Long-term evaluation options include things that persist past the educational opportunity. This can be self-reports of change in practice. This can be the assessment and measurement of return on investment based off the educational change, and also observations and changes in performance. So you can see based off the evaluation process, you may want to select both a short-term, which is an immediate feedback on the educational opportunity, and a more long-term evaluation process that gives you some information over time about your educational activity. Continuing education credits, CE determination and calculations. During the education and planning process, the nurse planner and planning committee must determine the criteria that learners must meet in order to earn contact hours. Criteria should be based on the desired learning outcomes. Criteria may include, but is not limited to, awarding credits at the end of the participation of the activity, by requiring attendance for a specified period of time, successfully completing a post-test, and completing the evaluation form or successfully completing a return demonstration. Contact hours are determined in a logical and defensible manner. Contact hours are awarded to participants for those portions of the educational activity devoted to the learning experience and the time spent evaluating the activity. For example, one contact hour is equal to 60 minutes. If rounding is desired in the calculation of contact hours, the provider must round down to the nearest one-tenth. For example, if it comes out to 2.758, you should round it to 2.75. Educational activities must also be conducted asynchronously or synchronously to allow for contact hours to be awarded at the conclusion of activities. The activity must be a minimum of 30 minutes in order to grant a .5 contact hour. The timeframes must match and be supported by the contact hour calculation for live activities. Evidence may include, but is not limited to, the agenda for the activity, the outline of the content to be delivered in the activity, other marketing materials to help support the calculation of contact hours. Time for breaks and meals should clearly be delineated and not included in the total contact hours awarded. For enduring materials such as print, electronics, web-based, the method for calculating the contact hours must be identified in the application. Selecting References Each education session should include references that support the identified practice gaps. Content should be selected based on the most current and reliable available evidence. Documentation should support the quality of the evidence chosen for the content. Examples include, but are not limited to, evidence-based practice standards, literature and peer-reviewed journal articles, clinical guidelines, best practices, and content and expert opinion. You may add additional pages to the application if the references do not fit into the application. Each citation should include the author, the title of the article, book, or video, the date of publication, at minimum. If content is based on information from a reputable website, include the website's address, what was reviewed on the website, the date listed on the website material, and the date that it was downloaded. References should be within the past five to seven years, unless the reference is classic, original research and remains relevant, and you are possibly addressing a historical topic. Hi. I am talking about the COI, better known as Conflict of Interest. Who controls the content? It's the nurse planner or content expert, the planning committee members, and then presenters, faculty, and authors. Remember, you will need to describe the expertise in the number of years of training specific to the educational activity that you have listed. If the description of the expertise does not provide adequate information, the accredited approver may request additional documentation. The planner must identify how they gain knowledge of ANCC and COA standards. Content experts, you must include with them their title, their education, their experience linked to the content, and the presenters, the same thing. You need to put their title, their education, and their experience in this area. Identification of if there is a conflict of interest, or if present, how did you resolve this conflict? The nurse planner is responsible for adherence to C and E criteria, rules, and requirements. Biographical information, again, such as job, title, position, and the name of employer, qualifications, and expertise in this area. Also, the content expert's responsibility is for documenting qualification, education, expertise in the subject matter. The COI form must include those biographical information regarding the qualification and the expertise. The content expert must document those qualifications. Contact reviewer, they need to have listed their degree, their credentials, what makes them the expert in this? How many years have they been trained to do this and evaluated for that conflict of interest? And this is highlighted in bold for you, not a member of the planning committee. They cannot be a content reviewer. The presenter, faculty, author, must be capable of addressing the content in which he or she presents. Expertise in subject matter can be evaluated based on years of training, education, professional achievements and credentials, their work experience, honors, awards, professional publications. But remember, please, they cannot be a member of the planning committee. And this is a copy of the conflict of interest form. It looks scary, not really. We can break it down. So it's an evaluation in a resolution, the conflict of interest form is. What is a conflict of interest? The potential for conflict of interest exists when an individual has the ability to control or influence the content of an educational activity and has a financial relationship with a commercial interest. The products or services of which are pertinent to the content of the educational activity. The nurse planner is responsible for evaluating the presence or absence of the conflicts of interest and resolving any identified actual or potential conflicts of interest during the planning and implementation phases of an educational activity. If the nurse planner has an actual or potential conflict of interest, they should recuse themselves from the role as a nurse planner for the educational activity. So let's go back and explain a little bit, what is commercial interest? What are we talking about? So I'm gonna tell you as defined by the ANCC, it's any entity producing, marketing, reselling or distributing healthcare goods or services consumed by or used on patients or an entity that is owned or controlled by an entity that produces, markets, resells or distributes healthcare goods or services consumed or used on the patient. Nonprofit or government organizations, non-healthcare related companies and healthcare facilities are not considered commercial interest. Employees of commercial interests and organizations are not permitted to serve as. If the content of the educational activity is not related to the products or services of the commercial interest organization, they cannot serve as planners, speakers, presenters or authors or content reviewers. Now, if the content of the educational activity is not related to the products of the commercial interest organization, then they are permitted to serve as planners, authors and content reviewers. As long as the provider has implemented a mechanism to identify, resolve and disclose the relationship as outlined in these standards. So again, the nurse planner, they're responsible for ensuring that all individuals who have the ability to control or influence the content of an educational activity discloses. To disclose all relationships with any commercial interest, including members of the planning committee, speakers, presenter, authors and the content reviewers. Now, what is a relevant relationship? A relevant relationships must be disclosed to the learners during the time when the relationship is in effect and for 12 months afterward. All information disclosed must be shared with the participants and the learners prior to the start of the educational activity. Evidence of relevant relationship with a commercial interest may include but is not limited to receiving a salary, royalty, intellectual property rights, consulting fees, ownership interests like stock and stocks options, excluding diversified mutual funds, grants, contracts or other financial benefits directly or indirectly from the commercial interest. Financial benefits may be associated with employment, management positions, independent contractor relationships, other contractual relationships, consulting, speaking, teaching, membership on an advisory committee or review panel, board membership and other activities from which remuneration is received or expected from the commercial interest. Evaluation. The nurse planner is responsible for evaluating whether any relationship with a commercial interest is considered relevant to the content of the educational activity. Disclosures may be categorized in the following ways. No relationship with a commercial interest exists, then you don't have to do anything. Relationship with a commercial interest exists, then A, a relationship is evaluated by the nurse planner not relevant to the content of the educational activities. So again, there's no resolution to be required. But B, if the relationship is evaluated by the nurse planner and it is determined to be pertinent to the content of the educational activity, then you have to have a resolution. Okay, let's speak about resolution in activity assessment actions taken to resolve conflicts of interest must demonstrate resolutions of the identified conflicts of interest prior to presenting and providing the educational activity to the learners. So here are some actions that must be documented to demonstrate that you did identify the conflict and then how the conflict was resolved. Removing the individual from all activities, revising the role of this individual, or not awarding continuing education hours, undertaking review of the educational activity by monitoring the activity and reviewing it back, participants feedback, feedback back. Individuals refusing to disclose relationships with commercial interests may not participate in any part of the educational activity. Additional criteria for ensuring content integrity. Promotion, which is a commercial interest organization, may not promote its goods or services in relations to the content of an educational activity at any time during which the educational activity takes place, including the introduction and conclusions of the activity, regardless of the format of the activity. Regardless of the format of the educational activity. Advertisements for the commercial interest organizations. Advertisement promoting the product or services of a commercial interest organization in relation to the content of an educational activity must be physically separated from the educational activity, regardless of the format of the educational activity. And then recruitments. A commercial interest organization may not recruit learners from an audience for any reasons. Confidentiality, providers may not share contact information related to the learners without written permission from the learner. Advertising and educational activity. A commercial interest organization may advertise an educational activity for which it has given commercial supports. Examples of this is like save the date cards, flyers, and emails. But acknowledgement of a commercial support. Providers may acknowledge commercial support provided by a commercial interest organization on marketing materials for the educational activity. And then distribution of the educational activity. A commercial interest organization may not distribute educational activities directly to the learners. The content of educational activity is responsibility of the provider of the educational activity. All materials used for the educational activity must be free from commercial biases. Now the provider is responsible for slides, handouts, other materials, do not display logos or trademarks of a commercial interest organization. Live, in person, educational activities are presented without reference to commercial interest. Enduring materials do not include logos, trademarks, other insignia, or references to a commercial interest organization. The provider is also responsible if its web-based materials do not include logos, trademarks, insignia, or reference to a commercial interest organization. An evaluation of the educational activity make no reference to a commercial interest organization. Remember, learners are not recruited for any purpose at all. And then you must document a completion. It must include name of the learner, name and address of provider of the educational activity, the title of the educational activity, the date of completion of the educational activity, location of the educational activity, the number of contact hours awarded, and then the official approval statement given by the International Association of Forensic Nurses. This is better known as a certificate of completion. So how can you show us evidence of disclosure? Here are some. Evidence of disclosing required information. A learner must receive disclosure of required items prior to the start of the educational activity. So there must be a notice of approval using the approval statement. Notice of requirements for successful completion. Like, if I need to be there for the entire activity, maybe it's seven days, maybe it's three days, you need to put that on your evidence of disclosure. Also, a completed evaluation form, if I need to complete that before I get my hours, you need to put that on there. Also, you need to put on if there's a conflict of interest, the name, name of the commercial interest and the nature of the relationship. Any advertising material, any commercial support if it's applicable, expiration date of enduring materials, any joint providership set is included. And you might ask me, what is a joint providership? That is when two or more groups collaborate to present on a program together. Disclosures are qualification contact hour attainment and then add materials provided at the beginning of a session, agenda and time verification, and example certificate items to include in the approval statements.

individual activity application

approval

continuing education

application process

learning outcomes

submission requirements

transparency

evaluation process

contact hours

successful applications