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 Dr. Carruthers |
"We are absolutely in favor of education," says Alastair Carruthers, M.D. However, he says, "Credentialing is an extremely difficult issue."
Over the past three years, he says, "ASDS has spent a considerable amount of time trying to set up an independent body to provide procedure credentialing for our membership."
He says that during that time, ASDS tried working with various organizations — particularly the American Academy of Dermatology. "And we've come to the conclusion that we are going to run our own procedure credentialing," he says.If ASDS were to set up an independent credentialing body, Dr. Carruthers explains, "All of a sudden it's not independent, because we've set it up." Likewise, he says costs of continuing medical education (CME) programs run by larger organizations are "out of sight for a small organization like us."
Clearly, he allows, ASDS running its own credentialing arm will be "open to the criticism that we are just 'papering' our members. That is our concern relating to any other procedural credentialing program — that it is valid."
However, he says ASDS's program will be properly organized and run "like a good CME program, with a pretest, post-test and demonstrated change" in participants' knowledge afterward.
The credentialing program will run separately from the main ASDS meeting (October 11 through 14, Chicago), he says. "We'll have a series of these rotating each year," Dr. Carruthers states, "so that we might pick something that's been pretty well worked out like Botox [botulinum toxin A, Allergan] or fillers this year and next year" before advancing to lasers and other topics.
For more information
http://www.asds.net
