From grand rounds to seminars, courses and workshops to conferences, more health professionals than ever can now take advantage of VCU Health’s continuing education activities to maintain their licensure and/or certification. 

VCU Health Continuing Education has been awarded a six-year joint accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). This is the maximum number of years allowed for accreditation and places VCU Health among the top tier of continuing health care education providers in the United States. Achieving this six-year accreditation demonstrates the program’s leadership in team-based, interprofessional education and care.  

In addition, VCU Health can now provide credits to social workers, psychologists, physician assistants and others besides those practicing medicine, pharmacy and nursing. This means VCU Health can offer more of its health care workers — as well as those from other institutions — the ability to take their courses here and enjoy the richer, more diverse learning experience that comes with such a broad collaborative environment.

“This is another big step in our continued emphasis of collaboration across the health professions,” said Dr. Alan Dow, assistant vice president of health sciences for interprofessional education at VCU and CEO and president of VCU Health Continuing Education. “Teamwork is essential for high-quality care, and collaborating on continuing education is part of our strategy. We’re better when we work together and learn together. Joint accreditation provides a key structure to support this.”

Added Dr. Peter Buckley, interim senior vice president for VCU Health Sciences, interim CEO of VCU Health System, and dean of the VCU School of Medicine, “This is an outstanding accomplishment that will enable us to continue to provide the highest quality interprofessional continuing education in health care. We are very grateful for the continuing education team and our health science leadership for their collaboration and hard work to bring this critical credentialing to fruition.