NARM has always acknowledged that Continuing Education hours for the renewal of CPM certification may be accredited or unaccredited. On the Recertification form, Category 1 is for accredited (or approved through a third-party evaluation process) CEUs, and Category 2 is for unaccredited CEUs that did not apply or receive third party evaluation but where the content was appropriate for midwives. In the past, the required 25 credit hours could come from a variety of sources, with maximum hours in each category leading to the total of 25 hours. In the past, NARM accepted a CEU certificate as “accredited” if there was a third party designation on the certificate.
During the development of the Midwifery Bridge Certificate (MBC), more attention was paid to the definition of “accredited” or “approved” continuing education. The MBC requires that all courses listed under the required content categories be accredited or approved by a third party evaluation. During this process, the definition of accredited or approved CEUs was established, and examples provided of appropriate third party accreditors (such as MEAC, ACNM, any state or national nurses or perinatal associations, or health departments and licensing agencies). It was also stated that workshops offered by a state midwives association did not count as accredited unless a third party evaluation was done. The hosting organization could not accredit its own workshops. In order to be consistent, this definition was added to both the MBC application and the CPM Recertification application.
It has since come to our attention that several state midwifery organizations have been accrediting their own workshops, often using a process similar to third party evaluation but not actually done through a third party. By not announcing this clarification in advance with an implementation date, many midwives were caught by surprise when their CEUs for a state conference were not accepted by the CPM Recertification evaluators. It was not NARM’s intention to place hurdles in the recertification process but to raise the level of accountability for the education needed for recertification.
In acknowledgement of our error in not announcing the change in CEUs standards in advance, NARM will step back on this policy and allow some time for the standard to be implemented. While the CEUs cannot be accepted as accredited or approved if done internally, NARM will expand the maximum number of unaccredited hours in Category 2 to 20 instead of 10. This policy will be in effect until January 1, 2022. After that date, the maximum of unaccredited hours will revert back to 10. We hope this will give state associations time to implement a process for having their CEUs accredited to qualify in Category 1 and for CPMs to find the appropriately qualified CEUs to meet the requirements in all categories.
This policy will apply to any recertification applications currently in process and to all applications received before January 1, 2022. These changes do NOT apply to the categories of CEUs for the Midwifery Bridge Certificate, which are already clearly defined.
For more information —
Please contact us at info@narm.org or 888-842-4784 ext. 1, and we will answer all of your questions!
eBlast emailed May 1, 2019