>>McMAHON: Many leaders I talk to think of CME as the credit. They don't think of the opportunity to deliver a curriculum to build skills, integrate quality and safety, nurture teams, create professionalism, or evolve communication skills, for example. You know that CME can do all of those things and do it incredibly well. So how do you engage leadership in a conversation that helps them understand what you can do?

First of all, meet with your colleagues who do quality improvement. In many cases, they need to be educated that education can be the solution to many of the implementation challenges that they face, but you really need to understand what are the educational objectives that they're working to solve.

Number two, meet with your health system leadership. Whether that's a CEO, or a chief medical officer, or a chief nursing officer or others, get them together to find out what are the key issues facing the institution strategically. Are they looking on reducing re-admissions? Are they looking at reducing length of stay? Are they looking at reducing operative errors? Whatever the issues are, you need to understand what those educational initiatives are and where you can help.

Number three, take that information from QI and health leadership and build an educational strategy. This means coming up with an annual educational plan that embraces and is sensitive to institutional priorities, but also thinks of things like teams, well-being, other issues that your organization is facing.

After you've met with QI and met with your health system leadership and built an educational strategy, now is your opportunity to meet with your educators, sit down with, talk with, and find out what their educational needs are, for faculty development, and see what you can do to help them make the interventions that you need to do to meet the organization's priorities. CME can do a lot. It can do more, it can do better. And you are the solution to bringing these people together in hearts and minds, to make the difference that we all need.