The Citizen Advocacy Center has recently released two publications that report on meetings held in 2000. The first is the proceedings of a conference entitled Measuring Continuing Competence of Health Care Practitioners: Where are we now - Where Are We Headed? "The conference began with updates from licensing board officials and representatives of private certifying agencies in several health care fields - allied health, medicine, pharmacy, and nursing" Afterwards, attendees discussed "the barriers that have frustrated regulators and professions that have attempted to institutionalize continuing competency requirements (.)" and "conclude with a discussion of pr9omising strategies for overcoming the identified barriers." The second report is a series of excerpts from CAC's annual meeting. The theme of the conference was the role of licensing in patient safety and consumer protection with the discussions focusing on medical errors and the role of licensing boards in providing information to the public about practitioners.

For information call (202) 462-1174 or visit www.cacenter.org

The Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States publication Journal of Medical Licensure and Discipline, Vol. 87, No. 2, 2001 contains several articles of interest including "Office-Based Surgery and Public Safety", Report of the Special Committee on Physician Profiling" and "Developing Physician Profiling Systems".

Call (817) 868-4000 for subscription information or visit www.fsmb.org

Also, the Federation of Chiropractic Boards Official Directory is available online at www.fclb.org

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