The Continuing Medical Education
Continuing Professional Development Committee
Chairperson: Nicolas Christodoulou
Mihai Berteanu, Franco Franchignoni, Angela Mc Namara, Michael Quittan, Jean-Michel Viton
Protocol on Mutual Agreement between the UEMS – EACCME® and the UEMS – PRM Section – Dublin 11/09/2004.
The EACCME® has been operational from January 2000 onwards. It was established with support of the national CME regulating bodies right from the start and activities are picking up gradually. With more and more European countries establishing some form of obligatory CME, the need for the easy and non-bureaucratic EACCME® system of recognition and exchange of CME credits is becoming increasingly apparent.
All stakeholders in the Accreditation Process (The UEMS – EACCME® with its Sections and Boards and the National Accreditation Authorities of the Member States of the European Union and European Economic Area) agree on the same basic criteria for Quality Control and Evaluation and agree on a minimal information data base that should be provided by the Organisers of Events in order to evaluate these events. These criteria are mentioned in the Quality Assurance document edited by the UEMS under the reference D 0217.
Both UEMS – EACCME and UEMS PRM Section agree on the following:
The National Accreditation Authority of each Member State of the EU (EEA) is the relevant authority guiding and controlling the Accreditation of the Doctors working in its country and determining the number of credits required.
Some distinction has to be made concerning the approbation of an event on the one hand and the number of credits attributed to that event on the other hand.
The National Accreditation Authority determines also the way the credits are accorded to each event and some currency system will be agreed on to recognise each other’s number of credits. Some National Accreditation Authorities can limit the number of credits allocated to events for the doctors of its country attending an event but this limitation cannot have an effect on the credits appointed to doctors of other Member States.
National Events are evaluated and accredited by the National Accreditation Authority of the Member State where the events takes place. When such a national event is attended by a doctor of another Member State of the EU (EEA), this event will be accepted by the National Accreditation Authority of the Member State where the doctor comes from.
Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine events on a European or International scale are evaluated by the UEMS PRM Section. The UEMS – EACCME will send all the relevant applications to the UEMS PRM Section, which will send back to EACCME the accreditation results. If an application is done directly to the UEMS PRM Section, the Section must inform the EACCME for the evaluation result. The evaluation of the event by the UEMS PRM Section has to be done in a well-defined period of time allowing the National Accreditation Authority the possibility of determining the number of credits allowed to a certain event.
Since both UEMS – PRM Section and UEMS – EACCME play a significant role in the evaluating for credits process, they will share the application’s fees paid by the event’s organising body.
The National Accreditation Authority is also requested to allocate the credits in a well-defined term so that the organisers can print the forms in due time.
Thanks to the mutual recognition of credits, the credits allocated by the UEMS – EACCME® can be considered as PRA class 1 credits for the AMA and vice versa credits allocated by the AMA have to be accepted by the UEMS – EACCME® as valuable credits and so the PRM Section and the National Accreditation Authorities have also to accept these.
This agreement on mutual recognition of credits between the UEMS PRM Section and the UEMS – EACCME® from the one part and the National Accreditation Authorities of the Member States of the European Union (EEA) from the other part, has the only aim to help and make the work easier for the National Accreditation Authorities in that sense that it makes doubling of the work unnecessary. Once a PRM event has been evaluated by the UEMS PRM Section, it has proven its scientific value. It helps also the National Accreditation Authorities to recognise each other’s work and makes it easier for the doctors and the Boards of the NAA in that they don’t have to redo the work each time.
This agreement shall take effect from the date of its signature
And, as a token of consent, the representatives of both Bodies signed this agreement in English, at the site and date indicated in the heading,
For the UEMS – EACCME Hannu Halila, President.
For the UEMS PRM Section, Anthony Ward, President, signed by Nicolas Christodoulou on behalf of the UEMS PRM Section & Board
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