CEO Update:
The Changing Landscape of Learning 

Doug Thomson
CEO, Canadian Orthopaedic Association

If, as usual, you're planning to attend this year's Annual Meeting in June, a word of caution: You'll have jumped the gun - by about a month.

And, conversely, if you haven't attended a June meeting in a while, because you're always tied up that month with professional and family obligations, you'll be pleased to know that this year's Annual Meeting will be held in July - from July 3 to 6, to be precise, and in Whistler, BC, no less.

The date change to July is the first test in a trial to see if we can attract more of you to come to your Association's premiere event. The COA Board made this decision two years ago after analyzing the results of a membership poll, in which half of you cited the Annual Meeting's June date as the main reason for non-attendance.

By holding the event in July in a resort destination, we sought to remove that barrier, as well as offer a venue that is more family-oriented and could be used as a departure point for a family holiday. Whistler offers spouses and children a fantastic variety of activities in one of the world's most beautiful settings.

So, if you haven't been to an Annual Meeting in the last four or five years, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the variety and quality of what we have to offer this year - a record-breaking seven symposia, for example, exploring such diverse topics as fall prevention in osteoporosis, intimate partner violence and international orthopaedics. And, of course, there will be our vast menu of ICLs, sub-specialty activities, posters, hands-on workshops, tips and tricks, and learned lectures. Indeed, you should be able to customize a personal program from these various educational streams that closely fits your individual professional interests and needs.

This is in keeping with current thinking at the Royal College of Physician and Surgeons of Canada, which views continuing professional development as a much more holistic undertaking. The new CPD paradigm stresses knowledge transfer from multiple sources of learning that cover not only clinical competence but also other dimensions of professional practice, as outlined under its CanMEDS framework: roles such as communicator, collaborator, manager, advocate, scholar, professional.

Recently, we drafted a brief discussion paper for the Association's CPD Committee so that its members could begin developing a three-year strategic plan on continuing professional development. The Royal College now requires such a strategy as part of our maintaining accreditation as a provider of CPD programs. Conceiving such a plan is no small task, nor is its implementation.

Like most specialty societies, the COA uses its Annual Meeting as its primary CPD platform, and we have become extremely good at producing a first-rate educational event. However, the ephemeral nature of an Annual Meeting reveals its inherent shortcoming. Typically, just under 40% of Active members attend. And while we hope the move to July will have a positive impact on turnout, there's still likely to be a fair number of orthopaedic surgeons who, for one reason or another, can't come. Thus, we need to become much more adept at bringing CPD programs and surgeons together.

Accordingly, the COA Executive has instructed me to develop an educational course on arthroplasty for Winter 2010. If this tightly focused program proves successful, then it's likely more will follow. One can also easily imagine web-based CPD programs, everything from live video-streaming of actual surgery to downloadable podcasts of symposia on issues of concern. And we'll need to broaden our usual frame of reference to include the non-clinical aspects of the profession, whether it be business management or writing a grant proposal or communicating with media and government.

All this is heady stuff, but it must be tempered by the effects of the global economic downturn. Industry was already cutting back on the amount of education they were willing to underwrite, and the current recession has accelerated the process. We will have to rely to a much greater degree on our own resources to meet the Royal College's vision of knowledge transfer and CPD. A logical first step is to capture more of the educational content (not just abstracts) presented at our Annual Meetings for re-packaging and distribution to the wider orthopaedic community. For the first time this year, we hope to be able to find the funds to enable us to audio- and video-tape portions of the Annual Meeting, which we plan to make available to members via our web site.

Remote learning through the Internet may be the way of the future, but nothing really quite replaces the synergy of mixing with your colleagues and friends at the Meeting, so we hope to see many more of you at Whistler this July.