During its midyear meeting in February, the Board of Trustees of the American Osteopathic Association (AOAs) agreed to standardize the length of time DOs can earn continuing medical education credit for the AOA's custom publications. 

Effective retroactive to January 2004, DOs have 18 months to complete CME quizzes from the date of distribution of each custom publication. Those publications currently consist of supplements to JAOAóThe Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, The Whole Patient supplements to The DO, the AOA's Women and Wellness newsletter, and the AOA Health Watch newsletter. 

In July, the AOA Board of Trustees decided to adopt the same uniform life span for quizzes in the JAOA's regular issues. 

Previously, DOs could earn CME from quizzes in AOA publications from the date of publication until the end of the 3-year CME cycle in which the publications were published. Under the former protocol, the CME quiz in an issue of a custom publication or the JAOA at the beginning of a CME cycle had a life span of approximately 3 years, while a quiz in a publication published at the end of a cycle had a life span of only a few months. 

“By standardizing the life span of all of our CME quizzes, we are leveling the playing field because the AOA is no longer inadvertently giving preferred treatment to those quizzes published early in a CME cycle,” explains AOA Editor in Chief Gilbert E. D'Alonzo Jr, DO. “Our new protocol should alleviate any confusion DOs may have had about the longevity of the CME quizzes in our publications.” 

In the process of approving the new protocol, the AOA Board stipulated that CME credits earned from AOA publications apply toward the CME cycle in progress when DOs submit quizzes to the AOA. 

“Now, each quiz counts for the CME cycle in which you take it, which may not be the same CME cycle in which the publication was printed,” notes Dr D'Alonzo, who is a professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “Not only does that streamline the process for DOs tremendously, but it also improves the educational value of the quizzes. DOs will no longer be taking 3-year-old quizzes related to out-of-date information, nor will they miss out on taking recent quizzes just because a new CME cycle started shortly after the quizzes were published.” 

Quizzes in the JAOA's supplements and in the JAOA's regular issues carry 2 hours of AOA Category 1-B credit. Quizzes in The Whole Patient carry 1 hour of Category 1-B, as do quizzes in AOA's Women and Wellness and AOA Health Watch. 

In addition to being able to take the quizzes in the hard-copy versions of the AOA's publications, AOA members can take the quizzes on DO-Online, which is located at www.do-online.org. After logging into the password-protected portion of DO-Online, AOA members can find the quizzes by clicking on the link titled “CME & Continuing Education” on the left-hand navigation bar. 

DOs who decide not to take the quizzes can still earn a half-hour of Category 2-B credit for each issue of a custom publication or the JAOA they read. The same credit is available for reading The DO and other medical publications. To obtain this CME credit, DOs need to submit a list of the journals they have read to the AOA Division of Continuing Medical Education. 

For more information about earning CME through AOA publications, AOA members may call (800) 621-1773, Ext 8262, or (312) 202-8262. They may also send e-mail to drodgers@osteopathic.org, fax questions to (312) 202-8200, or write to Delores Rodgers, director, Division of Continuing Medical Education, American Osteopathic Association, 142 E Ontario St, Chicago, IL 60611-2864.