Recent Medscape Offerings

Medscape has a couple new offerings of interest. The 1st is a CME article on the connection between psychiatric disorders, sexual trauma and urinary tract symptoms. Physicians can receive 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 credit for reading the article and completing the posttest.

Bullying’s Impact on Girls

Medscape has a new CE offering on the impact of bullying on girls. Seems that a new study indicates that girls have far more long-term psychological sequelae from bullying than boys, a finding particularly interesting to me as the mother of a girl-child. If you’d like to get better acquainted with the study (or at least a brief synopsis of the study), you can check it out and get 0.25 hours of AMA PRA Category 1 credit (or for my nursing friends, .50 contact hours) for your efforts. As always, these offerings are free, but require site registration to participate.

Managing STDs: Complex Cases

Contemporary Forums has a CE offering for both physicians and nurses on managing complex STD cases. It’s 1.5 CEs for $15, downloadable as either a PDF or MP3 (audio). You can catch a preview here if you’re not sure you want to spend the money.

Preventing Sexual Violence in Children

I had a colleague ask me for some resources for training healthcare providers on child sexual abuse, and while this wasn’t a resource specific to her needs, it made me realize I’ve never posted it before. The American Academy of Pediatrics published a web-based sexual violence prevention program last year. There’s quite a bit of information contained in it, so it’s probably worth trolling through the different sections. They break it up into age groups, too, so you can review based on interest (e.g. if you only see adolescents and adults in your practice, there are tabs for younger and older adolescents).

Universal Screening for IPV

The IPV world is a bit up in arms right now with the publication of JAMA’s recent study that universal screening doesn’t improve health outcomes or reduce violence. Not everyone is praising this study, and I think there are reasons to look at it critically. However, in the process of doing so, if you’d like to earn yourself a little CE credit, Medscape has an offering right now based on the article (physicians net 0.25 credits for completing the article and posttest).

STD Clinical Intensive

Because the topic is so popular on this site, another online STD clinical course, this one from Boston University’s School of Medicine. It’s free of charge, but requires registration to participate. CMEs available (natch), but the course info specifies nurses as part of the target audience, as well. For those of you running sexual assault programs, this might be a good one to have your team members complete as a part of annual competency efforts–just have them print off the certificate of completion at the end (or whatever they provide for CMEs), and you can add it to their personnel files.

I haven’t done this one yet, so I’ll be interested in feedback…

Pediatric Burns

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has a streaming Grand Rounds webcast available: Burns in Pediatrics–Abuse, Accident or Outlier? It’s available free of charge, but requires registration with the site. Unfortunately, this one is also CMEs only, but is certainly relevant for clinicians across the board. (I’m working on finding some new relevant nursing CEs, but there are a lot less of those, sorry.)

Suicide in the Elderly

Medscape has a short CME offering on suicide in the geriatric population: Sedatives & Hypnotics May Increase Risk for Suicide in Elderly Patients. 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™ available (Family Physicians – maximum of 0.25 AAFP Prescribed credit(s)). This is a standard article-posttest format, based on a study published this month in BMC Geriatrics.

Rural Mental Healthcare Provision

The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education has a series of grand round webinars on mental health issues for rural and frontier healthcare providers. CEUs & CMEs are available 1 year from the time of the original offerings, so all of these have CEs in place through at least November, ’09 (and 3 of the 4 well into Spring 2010). Access is free of charge; all are approximately 90 minutes long.

Management of Domestic Violence

Physicians: The Virtual Lecture Hall has the mother of all online DV continuing education courses: Current Management of Domestic Violence–Responding to IPV. For $20 a credit, you can earn up to 16 AMA/PRA Category 1 credits (or up to 16 AAFP prescribed credits). The course is case-based, with video and narration (check out a sample clip here). CMEs valid through April 2010. Although it was initially crafted in 2004, the site reports updates as recently as summer of ’08.

Childhood Bullying

Medscape has a new CE offering, Bullied Kids More Likely to Become Psychotic Preteens. It’s in your standard article-posttest format. 0.25 credits are available for both physicians and nurses. The article is based on a published study in the current issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. As with all Medscape offerings, it’s free of charge, but site registration is required.

Elder Abuse & Neglect

USC Ageworks has an online tutorial on elder abuse and neglect. It’s a free course and may provide 2.5 CMEs for physicians (sorry, no nursing CEs available), but you’d need to check to see if that’s still an option (the expiration date has passed, but not everyone adheres hard and fast to those dates, and not everyone updates their sites with newer info). Either way, it specifically addresses some forensic issues, and couldn’t be easier to access.

Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents

Medscape has a new CE offering: Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents–Risk Factor Identification, Screening & Prevention. 0.25 CEs are available for both physicians and nurses. Access is free, but registration is required on the site. As with all of their offerings, it’s in a standard article-posttest format; there is also a pretest (2 questions) that must be completed prior to reading the article.

PTSD & Traumatic Brain Injury

The University of Louisville Health Sciences Center has a free online course on PTSD & traumatic brain injury. Presented by Humana Military Healthcare Services, the course is meant to benefit “both civilian trauma patients and affected service members. Improved quality of care will reduce healthcare costs and morbidity related to these conditions. This course is designed for all physicians who provide care for civilian, veteran, and active duty military patients who have witnessed or have been exposed to serious trauma.”

Addressing Health Literacy, Cultural Competency, and Limited English Proficiency

HRSA has an online course available on addressing health literacy, cultural competency and limited English proficiency for clinicians. The course consists of 5 modules; CEUs/CMEs are available. All that’s available about the course is on the site page:

• Improve your patient communication skills

• Increase your awareness and knowledge of the three main factors that affect your communication with patients: health literacy, cultural competency and low English proficiency

• Implement patient-centered communication practices that demonstrate cultural competency and appropriately address patients with limited health literacy and low English proficiency