Governance | Membership | Education | Planning | ASHRM Support | Samples
Handbook => Education => Getting Started
Objectives
One of ASHRM’s and your chapter’s goals should be to provide your members with opportunities to grow professionally. By developing a chapter continuing education program, you can provide a vehicle for members to gain the knowledge, understanding and skills they need. At the same time, you will be encouraging member participation in the chapter’s activities, and enhancing ASHRM’s image as the organization of choice for individuals working in all aspects of healthcare risk management.
To measure the success of your educational program, keep in mind the following aspects of the experience throughout the planning process.
Programmatic objectives -- What do you hope to accomplish? How many members do you want to reach? How extensive an educational program can you implement?
Financial objectives -- How much money can the chapter spend on educational programming? Do you expect to make money on the programs?
Who’s in Charge?
Responsibility for the Conferences
Most chapters consider the education of their members to be the most important part of their activities and the responsibility of the Chairperson of the Conference Committee to be a high level position within the chapter.
The responsibility should rest with a member of chapter’s Board of Directors. Often the Vice President or President Elect fills this role.
Description of the Duties
The major tasks of the Chairperson of the Program Committee is to arrange the educational conferences for the chapter including:
Recruiting members of the committee
Selecting a venue for conferences
Arranging presentations for conferences
Preparing handouts and materials for distribution at conferences
Click here for a sample program committee annual calendar
Program Committee
The single most important thing about arranging a successful conference is to choose a program committee that will work well together and has sufficient diversity to suggest ideas and speakers who will stimulate the chapter’s membership.
Individuals should be asked to volunteer for the Program Committee. However, that doesn’t mean that you will want everyone who volunteers or that you will get sufficient diversity from those who volunteer.
Don’t be shy! Call people you think would be an addition to the committee and ask them to participate.
The best committee is 5 to 6 people. Any larger and it gets unwieldy and any smaller and you don’t have enough diversity
The ideal committee should include:
• Several hospital based risk managers preferably including at least one from an academic medical center and from a regional or community hospital
• At least one insurance company risk manager
• At least one attorney
• At least one broker
This provides a spread of people with different ideas who also have access to an interesting array of potential topics and speakers.
Click here for a sample committee tracker
The duties of the committee should be codified in a policy or procedure document that is approved by the Board of Directors.
Click here for a sample program committee policy
Frequency and Duration of the Conference
The chapter will need to decide how many conferences they wish to conduct each year and how long each of the conferences should last. Among the options:
Monthly lunch or breakfast meetings with a single speaker
Full day sessions with 5 or 6 speakers held annually or semiannually
Multi-day sessions
The frequency and duration of the conferences will depend upon:
The strength of the chapter’s treasury
The educational content and the time needed to present it
The geographic dispersity of the chapter.
Monthly, in-person meetings are not recommended for chapters whose members have to travel long distances to attend the meetings. Also, each conference increases the cost to the chapter.
Therefore, the Board of Directors should determine how much the chapter has available for educational conferences and number and type of conferences it is able to provide to its members.
Also remember that ASHRM has audio and Web conferences available and each chapter can subsidize the fees for its members at centralized locations or conduct its own distance learning conferences.
Types of Programs
One-day Seminars and Workshops
The seminar or workshop is the ideal way to teach new skills or engage members in an in¬depth learning experience. Because of their intense nature, these are most effective with small groups ranging in size from 10 to 100, depending on the subject matter or format planned. Their small size also enables all the attendees to actively participate in the discussion process.
Seminars tend to be more academic in nature, often focusing on theory, and are specialized study sessions led by an authority on the subject who can assist and guide the learners, and who provides them with detailed materials and texts. The format usually consists of a short lecture or presentation followed by small group discussions that then report their results back to the group. Workshops generally refer to a more “hands on” learning experience and are especially useful when the desired outcome is enhancement of a skill. Both create an atmosphere of great involvement and team spirit.
Monthly Meetings
A less intense, but equally effective, approach to education can occur at monthly chapter meetings. Because these programs are generally fairly short, this format does not lend itself to an in depth approach to the topic. However, scheduling regular educational programs for chapter members is useful to convey general information about a specific topic, or when the desired outcome is to change attitudes about a particular issue.
The frequency of monthly educational programs enables you to vary the topic, thereby appealing to a wider audience. The formats can range from lecture presentations to panel discussions. Finally, in these settings audience participation can be actively encouraged. The added advantage of a monthly meeting is regularity of contact a predetermined time when members can gather for networking and discussion. The networking that occurs is often as valuable as the formal part of the educational offering.
Business Meetings
Business meetings that are purposeful, well run and accomplish the necessary business in a reasonable time are an important component in the smooth operation of a chapter. All too often, however, the only people who attend such meetings are the chapter officers. One way to broaden the group of attendees is to schedule an educational program in conjunction with the chapter business meeting and invite the membership. In addition to benefiting from the program, members will have greater exposure to the issues the chapter faces, and, of course, there will be an increased possibility of their participation in chapter activities.
Many organizations find that combining the organization's business with meeting member needs to be so successful that they routinely schedule programs along with chapter business meetings. The caveat is that the business meeting needs to be efficient and effective or people will attend only the program, or not at all.
Conferences
The term “conference” often signifies a large meeting of several days’ duration. In fact conferences can range in size from 25 to more than 2000 attendees, and can be as brief as a half day, or as long as 3 4 days. The term conference is usually reserved for an educational program that includes multiple elements from technical papers and presentations, to lectures and speeches, many of which occur simultaneously. A conference can accommodate larger audiences, and both the program content and format of presentations can be varied, thereby appealing to the widest possible audience.
Pick the Dates
Pick conference dates at least six months and preferably nine months in advance of the meeting:
Remember to avoid holidays, especially religious ones. Setting a program date close to a major holiday may result in lower attendance and a higher room rental fee. Be cognizant of other programs being conducted in your area and nationally such as the ASHRM Annual Conference.
Send a "Save the Date" announcement as soon as conference date are selected to assure that the members have the dates on their calendars.
Click here for a sample Save the Date notice.
Prepare a Budget
The chapter’s Board of Directors should decide in advance whether they want the educational conferences to:
Make money or show a profit, which will be used to support other chapter activities;
Break even and provide a strong educational focus for the members; or
Lose money and be supported by other chapter revenues.
This basic decision will determine how the budget is constructed. The budget should consist of two sections:
1. Revenue. The three basic source of revenue for conferences are:
Fees paid by attendees
Sponsorship
Contributions from the chapter’s treasury
2. Expenses. This includes all the items necessary for the conference, including:
Room rental
Food and beverage
Speaker fees, honoraria, expense reimbursement or gifts
Copy and duplicating of notices, handouts, etc.
Postage
Administrative time and expenses
Items given to the attendees such as pens, bags, etc.
Make sure to carefully consider all of your expenses. The goal is to have the expenses equal the revenue. If they do not, the conference has lost money.
However, keep in mind that most chapters are nonprofit entities. Losing money is not necessarily a bad thing. Just be aware that if an educational conference loses money, the funds must come from “somewhere” and that “somewhere” is the chapter’s treasury. The chapter treasury is not an inexhaustible source of funds.
The budget is not “cast in stone” at the beginning of the conference. It should be reevaluated at each step of the process.
Click here for a sample conference budget
Materials Checklist
For each conference make sure you develop these materials (click on the links below for sample documents):
Program brochure
Evaluation form
An agenda for the day to be included in the package of handouts given to the attendees
Name badges
A certificate of attendance
A page to recognize the sponsors (should you choose to solicit sponsorship) that will be passed out to the attendees
PowerPoint slides for the beginning of the conference to recognize the sponsors and provide an outline of the opening remarks
Continuing Education Credits
Continuing education credit is extremely important and easy to obtain from ASHRM. Contact:
Pam Para, RN, MPH, CPHRM, FASHRM
Director of Professional and Technical Services
American Society for Healthcare Risk Management
One North Franklin
Chicago, IL 60606
Tel: (312) 422-3982
Fax: (312) 422-4580
ppara@aha.org
ASHRM will need copies of the CVs for all speakers and a copy of the program agenda. Copies may be provided by mail, fax, or electronically via e-mail no less than two weeks before the credits are needed.
The following wording must be used exactly as written below to describe the hours of continuing education both in the brochure and on the certificate of attendance:
"This meeting has been approved for a total of XX contact hours of Continuing Education Credit toward fulfillment of the requirements of ASHRM designations of FASHRM (Fellow) and DFASHRM (Distinguished Fellow) and towards CPHRM renewal."
