Only a physician organization may seek accreditation.

A physician organization is a not-for-profit group of health professionals with a formal governance structure, accountable to and serving, among others, its physician members through continuing professional development, provision of healthcare and/or research.

To be eligible for accreditation of CPD programs, a physician organization must exist for at least one year.

Physician organization membership extends beyond receiving a newsletter; it must meet the following criteria:  

1. To be eligible for accreditation of CPD programs, a physician organization must exist for at least one year.
2. Membership is comprised of physicians.
3. Membership is not solely comprised of the Board of Directors.
4. Defined criteria exists on who is eligible to be a member.
5. Defined expectations of members are listed (eg. payment of dues, etc.).
6. Membership includes the right to vote on strategic directions and initiatives of the organization as a whole.

The definition of physician organization includes the following:

• Faculties of medicine
• Hospital departments or divisions
• Medical societies
• Medical associations
• Medical academies
• Physician research organizations
• Physician clinics
• Health authority hospital department or medical advisory committee (HAMAC)
• Canadian provincial medical regulatory authorities (MRAs)

Please note: Organizations who have not applied before may need to provide supporting documentation , (e.g. Terms of Reference, constitution, meeting minutes, constitution, governance policies, etc ) demonstrating the organization meets the required criteria. This may increase application processing time beyond the typical 4-6 weeks.  

This definition does NOT include:

• Healthcare/pharmaceutical industry commercial interests (HPIs)
• Health authority administration offices
• Disease-oriented patient advocacy organizations (e.g. Canadian Diabetes Association)
• Government departments or agencies (e.g. Health Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada)
• Small number of physicians working together to develop educational programming

Every CPD activity must have a scientific planning committee (SPC), accountable to and overseen by a fiscally responsible physician organization. The SPC is responsible for protecting the CPD learning environment and program content/quality. The SPC must follow the UBC CPD Ethical Standards for all aspects of the CPD activity and ensure that the CPD activity is not used to promote or sell products or services that serve any form of professional or financial interests, including their own.

The SPC must (i) include at least two physicians and (ii) be representative of the target audience. Members must be aware of their responsibilities pertaining to accreditation/certification standards. The SPC must have a chair and an agreed decision-making process to enable it to fulfill its responsibilities.

Disclosures (from each SPC member) and declarations (for specific SPC member roles) need to be signed and submitted with application.  See below.

Responsibilities of SPC

• Uphold the UBC CPD Ethical Standards for all aspects of the CPD activity
• Identify the educational needs of the intended target audience
• Develop learning objectives
• Select educational methods
• Select SPC members, speakers, moderators, facilitators and/or authors
• Develop and deliver content
• Evaluate outcomes
• Oversee logistics
• Review disclosures and mitigate conflicts of interest
• Ensure commercial sponsorship support and programming comply with standards
• Declarations
• Disclosures
• Informing others of accreditation standards (speaker letter)

NOTE: Representatives of a healthcare/pharmaceutical industry commercial interest (HPI; see UBC CPD Ethical Standards , Element 3 for definition) cannot be members of the SPC or participate in decisions related to any aspect of the CPD activity.

Consult CHECKLIST & Forms to access the appropriate Declaration Forms.

Declarations are required by select SPC members who qualify to take on a formal role for the credit type. A qualifying physician may have more than one SPC role (eg. one could serve as accountable physician and RCSPC member).

Accountable Physician

Required for all programs. The accountable physician is the chair or one member of the SPC representing the physician organization, and as such agrees to assume ultimate responsibility for upholding the accreditation/certification standards and for following the UBC CPD Guidelines for Support in preparing and implementing the CPD activity. 

RCPSC Member

Required for MOC credits. One member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) is required to be on the SPC to represent the target audience of specialists. The declaration verifies the RCPSC member of having had substantial input into the program.

UBC FoM Member

Required for Mainpro+ credits. UBC CPD can only certify UBC Activities for Mainpro+ credits. A physician member of the UBC Faculty of Medicine (UBC FoM) is required to be on the SPC to represent UBC FoM.  The declaration verifies the UBC FoM member of having had substantial input into the program, which is the minimum requirement for a program to be considered a UBC Activity. 

CFPC Member

Required for Mainpro+ credits. One member of the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), residing in the province of BC, is required to be on the SPC to represent the target audience of BC family physicians.

A conflict of interest (COI) occurs when external interests interfere or appear to interfere with the primary interest - in this case an accredited CPD activity. The global best practice in CPD is for all individuals involved in developing accredited CPD activities to be transparent about their financial relationships through a disclosure process, outlined below.

Disclosure Review Process

1. Collect SPC members' disclosures and include with your accreditation application. 
2. Collect content contributors' disclosures (presenters, authors, instructional designers, facilitators, moderators, etc.) for your SPC to review. These do not need to be submitted to UBC CPD.
3. Communicate disclosures to learners. Once the review concludes that there are no COIs, ensure the remaining relevant financial relationships are disclosed to participants for transparency. See Disclosure-Summary.

COI Management 

The SPC members are responsible to review each others' disclosures and the disclosures of all content contributors to eliminate unresolvable financial relationships and mitigate relevant financial relationships. A step-by-step review process is available in the UBC CPD Ethical Standards, Element 3.0. 

Disclosure Form

See the CHECKLIST & Forms for the disclosure form.

For CPD activities to be eligible for accreditation, the PRIMARY target audience must be physicians (specialists, family physicians, or both). Aside from governing the program design and content, identifying the target audience determines which type of credits will be most appropriate. You can look up individual physicians in the provincial regulatory college directory (or either national medical college) to verify what kind of medicine they are certified to practice in BC: https://www.cpsbc.ca/public/registrant-directory 

Needs assessment is the process involved in gathering information to identify the learning needs of the target audience. The learning needs are the basis for identifying appropriate learning objectives and the content and format of the educational activity. To identify the learning gap the SPC should describe the target audience, work environment or work activities, and demonstrate a valid professional practice gap from which the educational needs are identified. Identify preferred learning style and current knowledge or skill level, then determine desired knowledge or skill level.

The most useful needs assessments are those where multiple methods are utilized to identify educational needs linked to improved patient care. 

To help identify needs, the SPC should ask the following questions:

• How common is the need among our target audience?
• How many different assessment sources indicate this need?
• How significantly will the unfulfilled learning need hinder health care delivery?
• How directly is the need related to actual physician performance?
• How likely is it that a CPD activity will improve practice behaviour?
• Are sufficient resources available to effectively address this topic?
• How receptive will our target audience be to a session on this topic?

NOTE: Since the release of the National Standard released in Jan 2018, needs assessment tools are required to be submitted with an application (examples include past evaluations, focus group questionnaires etc.).

See the CHECKLIST & Forms for a sample needs assessment.

The physician organization must have overall accountability for the finances of the CPD activity.

Accredited activities should aim to be financially self-sustaining, and should not be profit-generating. Surplus funds generated from a recurring activity should be earmarked for the planning, development, or delivery of subsequent activities of a recurring nature. Surplus funds from a single, non-recurring event should be returned to the physician organization (not an individual) and be used to support continuing education activities in the organization.

Create a Budget

Identify all sources of funding/revenue and expenses directly on the budget, even if internally funded. Indicate how any surplus or deficit will be handled. A budget with all projected revenues/funding from all sources, and general expenses, is to be submitted with the application package.

See the CHECKLIST & Forms for a sample budget.

Sponsorship

If you are planning to obtain sponsorship, please follow the UBC CPD Ethical Standards for Accredited CPD Activities 2024, Element 4. Remember that commercial sponsorship requires that participants be charged registration fees.

Only the UBC CPD-approved sponsorship opportunities may be offered. The terms, conditions and purposes by which commercial sponsorship is provided must be documented in a written agreement that is signed by the CPD provider organization and for-profit sponsors. The sponsorship agreement reflects the sponsorship request/prospectus.

See CHECKLIST & Forms for: Sponsorship Agreement

See Financial Accountability

UBC CPD can provide credits for either group learning or assessment programs. 

Determine which learning format is the most appropriate for your program: Group learning focuses on interactivity for the learner. Assessment provides the learner with individualized feedback on their performance/knowledge. A program may have some elements of each, but you need to decide which one is the best fit overall for the learning gaps identified in your needs assessment. 

Learning objectives that address identified needs must be created for the overall event and for individual sessions, and be available to participants. A learner-centered objective is specific, short-range, and relatively concrete. It describes what a learner will be able to do differently afterward (what learner behaviour will change).

Design your CPD learning activity to address the professional practice gaps identified by the needs assessment.

​Create a detailed program with an agenda of topics, speakers, start and end times, question and answer/discussion periods, breaks, etc.

• Include learner-centred objectives.
• Count credit hours by totaling the educational hours and subtracting the breaks.
• Relay the accreditation standards to all those developing content ("speaker communications"): Consult CHECKLIST & Forms for template

Inform Content contributors of Accreditation standards

The SPC must inform content contributors (e.g. presenters, authors, instructional designers, facilitators, moderators, etc.) of the requirements to:

• develop content and learning objectives based on the identified needs of the target audience [note: SPC should share identified needs with content contributors]
• develop learning objectives that are learner-centred
• create content and materials that provide (where applicable) a balanced view for therapeutic options related to the content area and reflect the current scientific literature
• describe therapeutic options using generic names (or both generic and trade) and not reflect exclusivity and branding
• declare any off-label use when making therapeutic recommendations for medications that have not received regulatory approval
• make every effort to avoid bias, whether commercial or other
• disclose all financial relationships with commercial and not-for-profit organizations
• presenters must disclose to learners both on slides and verbally
• include references to evidence used to create content
• adhere to time allotment, including time for interactivity such as Q & A
• ensure content and materials are available to the SPC for review prior to being made available to learners
• ensure content and materials meet professional standards and legal requirements, including the protection of privacy, confidentiality and copyright

Consult CHECKLIST & Forms to access the speaker communication (comms) template.

By now your program is ready to be reviewed for CPD credit approval.

Consult the CHECKLIST & Forms  to ensure you have all of the required documentation and apply.

Applying via the online portal is recommended.

Once your program has been approved, you will receive an approval email with your official accreditation/certification statement to be used on certificates, as well as the "Accredited by UBC CPD" logo. This information may also be used for advertising the CPD credits for your learning activity. UBC CPD forwards notification of approval to the appropriate medical college(s) so that physician may claim credits after attending.

The evaluation requirement is for organizers to provide the opportunity to learners to evaluate the CPD activity. 

See the CHECKLIST & Forms for: Evaluation Form and Speaker Evaluation templates.

REQUIRED QUESTIONS 

To be included on the evaluation form of an accredited activity:

1. Did the program meet the stated learning objectives?   (Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree)
2. Did you perceive any degree of bias in any part of the program?  (Yes   No | If yes, please explain: )
3. Reflecting on the program content, what impact will this education have on your practice? 
   (Open text box)
4. This education offered balanced views of diagnostic tools and/or therapeutic options  (Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree) [Required only for clinical content programs only]
5. Which CanMEDS Role(s) were addressed during this CPD activity? Check all that apply: 
   ☐ Medical Expert ☐ Communicator ☐ Collaborator ☐ Leader ☐ Health Advocate ☐ Professional ☐ Scholar [Required for MOC programs only]

Recommended questions:

• Can you identify any barriers to incorporating what you learned into your practice? (Open text box)
• Please suggest any topics or speakers you would like to see at future CPD activities. (Open text box)

As of June 2018, these two questions are no longer required on evaluations for Mainpro+ programs:

• This CPD activity content enhanced my knowledge
• Indicate which CanMEDS-FM roles you felt were addressed [Note: the CanMEDS question is required for MOC programs only].

The evaluation must include the question: “Did you perceive any degree of bias in any part of the program? Yes/No”. The responses to this question (ie. the number of yes, no and total responses) are to be forwarded to UBC CPD within 3 months of the event, via a brief email.

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