Before Getting Started – Tips & Key Points

1. This is a planning document, not a tell-us-what-you-did document – using it as a guide to planning your activity will be significantly easier that trying to fill out the form after planning has been completed.
2. Continuing nursing education is purposeful, designed to improve the practice of nursing and enhance the professional development of the nurse. We cannot approve your activity for continuing nursing education credit without clear evidence of how you have identified a problem and have a plan to implement and measure the success of your education to address that problem.
3. The nurse planner is key to the success of the process, not a name added to a form. The nurse planner, with an understanding of how adults learn, guides the process of assuring that the problem is identified and that content is selected based on best available evidence and is presented in a fair and balanced manner. The nurse planner is accountable to MNA to assure that all accreditation criteria are met so the activity can be approved for awarding of contact hours.
4. All parts of the activity application need to fit together. There should be a logical flow between the identified problem, the evidence, the educational need, and the desired outcome. The plan for setting the criteria for successful completion and evaluating the activity should show how learners will have gained knowledge or developed skills to help them address the problem. The content and references must support transition of learners from where they are now to where they need to be at the end of the activity.
5. When planning a conference, the application should address the criteria requirements for the whole conference, not for individual sessions. In other words, what problem creates the need to bring people together for this 3-day conference, and what do we expect them to know or be able to do at the end of it?