#165 - CE for Compliance - Live or Online?

Since the COVID pandemic, online education is every popular.  Flexibility and affordability is highly desirable. In-person education remains a valuable component to training. Explore the options and benefits of online and in-person training and CE with the Compliance Divas. 

Resources:

• American Dental Association (ADA) - List of State Dental Boards   https://bit.ly/4dBAXxq
• Dental Assisting National Board - https://bit.ly/3Xuj4uw
• ADA New Dentist Blog - Online or In-Person:  Choosing the Right CE Course   https://bit.ly/3KWpPOd
• National Institutes of Health (NIH) Observations from Transforming a Continuing Education Programme in the COVID-19 Era and Preparing for the Future  https://bit.ly/4c4maKn
• Webpt - Internet or In-Person:  The Pros and Cons of Online CEU courses  https://bit.ly/3Rx84c0
• Continu Blog - In-Person vs. Online Training:  What Does the Research Say?   https://bit.ly/45xKaDd

                                                 https://www.thecompliancedivas.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

I'm Leslie Cannon. I'm Mary Gavoni.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

I'm Linda Harvey. I'm Olivia Juan, and together we are the Compliance Divas. Welcome to the Compliance Divas podcast. My name is Olivia Juan, and I'll be your moderator in this episode. In this week's edition, we're talking about training and CE, online or in person. As the Compliance Divas, we bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating regulatory compliance to keep you on course. Please subscribe to the Compliance Divas podcast through your favorite podcast channel or on our website, thecompliancedeevas.com. Any resources that we mentioned during the podcast can be found on our website. You may also submit your questions to support at thecompliancedeevas.com. So training and CE online or in person. Maybe as the safety manager, you're trying to select courses for the remainder of the year. Or as a participant, you're trying to determine which courses that you will attend. So with all of the different options that are available, we have to select what best suits our organization. And who better to ask than the compliance divas who have so much experience both in platform work and remote work, as well as going into dental offices and providing hands-on training. So I wanted to start with our diva Mary and have her discuss with us some considerations as it relates to the dental board requirements, such as in some states, for the hygienist having X amount of online CE versus in-person, and how we even look up that information, Mary.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

That always is a question that I get. So the state board information is very, very important for our doctors, for hygienists, and for dental assistants, dental assistants who are licensed through their state or registered, but also for dental assistants who have certification through the dental assisting national board. And each different state has different requirements as in number of hours for CE. Do they have to have infection control training? Are there specific topics that must be covered in infection control training? And of course, how many hours must be live CE? How many hours maybe video recording or an online webinar, or even reading articles in many states and writing a short summary of that article can be applicable for CE credit. So a really great place to start if you're looking for your state dental board, and we'll put this in the resources. There is a list on the ADA website of all the states and a link to that state's dental board. And when you get to the state dental board site, then you need to search the rules. So that might be a little daunting because the rules can be very lengthy and complex, but most of these documents will open up on your computer as a PDF document, and there will be a search box. So if you just type continuing education in the search box, it will point you to or take you to the section where the continuing education information is housed. And then for the dental assisting national board, it's very straightforward. They also have a list of state dental boards as well for dental assistance, and you can easily find out. Now, the one thing that you also have to take into consideration is that some states require infection control training that is simply about infection control principles and protocols, but doesn't discuss OSHA regulations. You may mention perhaps some CDC guidance because of the standards of care that the CDC has, but you can't mix in some states OSHA and infection control in the same course. They must be separate. And we also have to be aware of whether or not you need a certain number of hours. Do you need one hour, two hours, three hours, and how often? For CDAs, it's once in a calendar year. For many of the licensees or registrants from a dental board, it might be once in relicensing cycle, which might be two or three years. So everyone should be aware of what their dental rules say. Everyone should be aware of what their continuing education rules are, and you can easily find them through your state dental board's website.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Great information, Mary, because we certainly don't want anyone getting upside down and their CE and being in a panic. I've had those phone calls before, especially our state, Tennessee, requires chemical dependency. And there's certain requirements, the differences between regular chemical dependency and prescription opioid prescribing guidelines. So that's great information and resources that we will make available for our listeners. Now we want to direct our attention to our diva, Linda, to discuss the value of online education, maybe talk about cost savings and so forth and why it's become so popular, Linda.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Well, Olivia, I think that online education was on the rise pre-pandemic and it has only surged since that time. When I think back, even just you know, five or 10 years ago, I think online education has been with us for quite some time. And I know many individuals that completed a master's or even a bachelor's in dental hygiene or whatnot remotely. So online education has been growing, but since the pandemic, online CE education has really surged. And there's a couple of factors I think that are behind that, Olivia. One is the cost savings. No longer do you have to pay for the travel for the team to all have to go someplace and be out of the office and the travel time and all the things that are involved in with HR and paying teams for when they're attending a travel or when they're attending a course. So you don't have that out of office time. And then when you look at the growth of the DSOs, the dental service organizations throughout the past few years, it really works well for those organizations because of the number of employees. They can leverage the economy of scale to more easily train a large number of employees economically and easily through online training, especially if the DSO spans multiple states. It's too hard to get everybody together, much less in one office, than multiple offices. So it really gives them that opportunity in a more efficient and cost-effective way. But I do see that many DSOs opt for sometimes regional customized training that's in person when they're implementing a new service or new equipment. And it's usually very skills-focused, like implants or laser dentistry, and maybe even infection control and prevention. But typically it's not just general CE credits and it's not required compliance training like OSHA. Well, there's a couple other things, Olivia, that I think our listeners should keep in mind when considering online CE for their to meet the requirements, and that is to do their due diligence to ensure that the online training program is updated on a regular basis. And many of the companies that have online training have the date span on their course. Usually it's three years and they're updating it. So make sure the course is updated so that you're getting the latest information. And likewise for smaller practices that might be relying on a CD ROM that they've had for several years. And if you've been watching that same CD ROM year after year, it may be outdated. And so whether you're in a private practice, a group practice, or a DSO, the goal is to learn new information and be updated every year. While the OSHA laws don't change dramatically year after year, there are new strategies for implementing compliance and being up to date. So you want to be sure that you're learning and not just checking a box to meet your compliance requirements. And then lastly, Olivia, as Mary noted, it's very important that the teams and offices and organizations understand the number of CE credits that are required in these areas and to be sure that they're not relying too heavily on recordings if they have to have a certain number of CE in person. So I think those are some of the highlights, Olivia, of why online education is going to continue to grow.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

That was very helpful, Linda. Thank you. And we can see why so many people enjoy online education because it is convenient, it is a cost saving, and it's not unusual for practices to have multiple locations. And as you mentioned, even in multiple states. So that's some good insight on what our dental industry is doing. But now we'll change gears with our diva leslie to discuss is there still value in the in-person education style? And can you elaborate on hands-on activities, the benefit of direct observations, and even the synergy of working directly with the participants, Leslie? What's your thought?

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Well, there's a couple of different ways that I deliver in-person. One is either association or dental society study clubs, where everyone comes together at one place. And the benefits of having in-person training at an association or study club level is that, well, the presenter can gauge the reaction of the audience and be able to determine whether the information needs more elaboration or whether it's time to move on to another subject. But there's also the manner of being able to hear someone else's comments. When you're a participant in an online program, you don't really know what other people are thinking. Sometimes there's a chat window where you may be able to see the questions, but when you're in person, you may have questions that come up that are things that you've not thought of in the past. So there can be a lot of building on having the wisdom of the group, if you will, because sometimes those questions are thrown back out by the presenter to the audience and say, Well, what do you do in this situation in your dental practice? And how has that worked for you? So the synergy of being in person is very helpful. And I think one of the things that we can do sometimes when we're online is we can get a little distracted and it's not too unheard of to maybe be checking your email or cleaning your area or maybe you know doing something that answering maybe a phone call or things like that. Where online you may not be fully engaged as you would be if you're sitting in a room with other people. Now, when I talk about going into offices and the value of in-person education, now we can really start looking at things that people think they're doing right, but they're not really doing them right. For example, I've seen lots of mistakes with the definition of spray, wipe, spray with with the disinfectants, where the what the people come away with on that is spray a surface with a spray disinfectant and then get a wipe disinfectant and then wipe it and then spray it again with another spray disinfectant. And so, yeah, that sometimes you don't get that unless you're actually seeing it. I love being able to observe people when they're actually providing dental care, because I can observe hand hygiene before gloving, and then whether it's even done at all after gloves are removed, donning and doffing of PPE, taking a look at the sterilizer chamber to see how it's loaded and see if instrument pouches are being dated, if they're wet when they come out of the sterilizer, how things are being stored. So there's a lot of benefit for both being in an association or a study club type of meeting and being in person in a dental office conducting one-on-one training with that particular team.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

I agree, Leslie, 100%. I mean, we see the value of online education, but we also see how important it is to be live and in person with less distractions. And that reminded me of something, Leslie. One of the things that we've encouraged our clients to do when they're doing online education is make sure you have a good speakers, a microphone, and if you're doing live Zoom, have a camera. These are not expensive items of technology that can be ordered on Amazon, but it makes for a much more lively online experience, particularly for Zoom settings, if the participants are visible for smaller groups. I mean, we realize when there's several hundred on a call, you can't do that with a webinar. But if you're working with a small office, it's nice to be able to interact with them. Because my concern is that are they even watching? Are they even engaged or did they just walk away? So there are a couple of tips to make for a more interesting meeting. But to summarize, we know that online education is increasingly more popular for the reasons stated. Linda did a beautiful job explaining that. I appreciate Mary going over the dental board requirements. Keep that in mind when you're choosing your courses so you don't end up at the end of your cycle with insufficient live CE that is required. And thank you, Leslie, for highlighting how important live education still is to work hands-on with the participants. And I think, Leslie, do you have one more comment for us?

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Yes, that's right. I think that sometimes we don't remember whether a class is approved by your dental board. It may be something that seems like it should be approved, but everyone should be looking to make sure that that particular course is available for approval for dental license renewal. I was surprised when I looked at Texas, their dental board requirements do not allow you to use your CPR training or your hours for CPR toward license renewal. Whereas in California, you can use up to four hours of CPR training. So I would encourage people to not only look and see what their dental board requires as far as in-person and what's allowed as home study, but also to see what categories or topics are allowable toward license renewal. And if there's a percentage, again in California, 80% of the credit has to be on clinical subject matter and required subjects, and 20% is allowed to be in other topics like office operations that benefit patient care, uh communication skills, risk management. So please be sure you look at those areas too when you're taking a look at all of your continuing education requirements.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

That's such valuable information, Leslie. Thank you for adding that. You know, as the compliance divas, we bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating regulatory compliance to keep you on course. Please submit your questions to support at thecompliancedeevas.com. And any resources that we mentioned during this episode will be available in the show notes. Thank you for tuning in, and we will see you with the next episode.