Since last weekend was the Midwest Child Life Conference in St. Louis, (shout out to the hosts for an awesome conference weekend!) PDUs are in the forefront of my mind. Sometimes I feel like they can be so hard to earn and on top of that, if you don't get reimbursed by your workplace, they are pretty expensive. Because of this I started doing some poking around to find alternative methods to earn PDUs, without spending gobs of money. Below are the ways I've found that work best for me (these are all activities outside of the hospital environment; i.e. grand rounds, schwartz rounds etc are not listed).
1. Focus Articles: This is a great resource that I just stumbled upon. These are articles that come out quarterly through the ACLP bulletin. What's really great is that by reading the articles, and then passing a 5 question quiz, you can earn .5 PDU! Even better is that you can utilize these articles to earn up to 10PDUs during your certification cycle.... that's more PDUs than I earned at the Midwest Conference! These articles are free for ACLP members and if you're not a member they will cost you $15.00 a piece. Find access to these articles here.
2.) Annual Conference: I have not yet had the ability to attend an annual conference in person. They haven't been some place close enough and I didn't have the money to go. So, instead I have purchased the access to past annual conferences. I really like this option because now I can get all the same great info that was shared at annual conference, but for a fraction of the cost...and also I can earn the PDUs while sitting on my couch. I bought the 2017 conference package, $160.00 with my ACLP membership, and now have access to over 60 PDU credit opportunities. Even if there were only 60 PDUs available through this package, buying them at that price means it is costing me $2.66 for a PDU.... you can't find that anywhere else. If you aren't an ACLP member this will cost you $195.00 for the package. Find the past conference sessions here.
3.) Community Conferences: This option takes a little bit of searching for, but can be well worth it in the end. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get a little worn out with the topics at presentations/conferences geared towards Child Life Specialists. I do appreciate them and they are helpful for keeping up on my practice, but sometimes I just need to get away and find something different. My favorite thing in this instance is attending conferences in my community. I look for events that mention that they provide CEUs for social work or a different psychosocial support profession since most groups don't know about Child Life. My favorite website to find these on is Eventbrite. With this website you can narrow it down to a specific location and can even search for topics you're interested in. I have gone to a few conferences that I've found on Eventbrite and the cost to me was totally free! I LOVE earning free PDUs!
What are some ways that you have found to obtain PDUs?
-K
Commentaires