What is a CME?
CME stands for Continuing Medical Education and per the National Institute of Health, “CME refers to educational events that have been approved for CME credits”. The American Heart Association (AHA) is not an accrediting agency, rather, they authorize the use of their courses for continuing education credits. As a designated training center, Code One offers a variety of classes from the AHA. Some of these classes include Basic Life Support (BLS), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS). These courses are offered as both an in person course, and online.
Why can’t I get CME’s if I take an in person class?
In person classes do not typically offer CME credits. This is because the classes are taught by a training center, and training centers are not an authorized agency to award credited hours. If you take an online course, however, you are able to claim CE
credits from the class. You can then provide your CE hours to your employer and the accrediting agency that awards those hours.
There are three main agencies that are accrediting, and they include the American Medical Association Physicians Recognition Award (AMA PRI), American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), and the Commission on Accreditation for Pre-Hospital Continuing Education (CAPCE). Under these agencies, there are only certain professions that can claim CE credits for AHA classes. These include physicians, nurses, and Emergency Medical Technicians. The amount of credit hours will depend on the class and agency.
What is a credit?
A credit is equal to 1 hour. So 0.5 credits would equate to one half hour. For ACLS and PALS, each agency awards 0.5 credits. For BLS, they award 0.25 credits. There is one exception to this, and that is for the state of Massachusetts.
As required by the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing, Massachusetts 25 244 CMR 5.00: Continuing Education, they award credits based on the number of class hours. For our current in person ACLS/PALS courses, they are awarded 8 contact hours, for in person BLS it is 3.5 contact hours, and for online courses they are only awarded 1 hour.
How to claim CE credits from an AHA eLearning account:
Login to https://elearning.heart.org/
Click on arrow “ V” next to name in upper corner, brings drop down menu Select Certificates and eCards.
Select the Course- If CE credits are available, there will be a Pencil Icon in the CME/CE Credits section.
Click on Pencil to edit information as it pertains to your certification Claim Credit(s).
Depending on your profession and licensing agency and their requirements, you may or may not be able to claim continuing education credits from an AHA course you took.
How to claim CME from our BEACON courses?
If you took a course on our BEACON platform, claiming your CME’s are easy.
- Log into your Moodle account
- Launch the course
- Complete the survey
- Then click Claim CE/CME icon to claim the appropriate credits for your course.
It’s that easy! If you ever have trouble trying to claim the credits you’ve earned through a Code One course, you can always contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
Need to claim CME s as a Physcian PALS 11/14/21/ecard 21527567294
ACLS ecard 21507507763
Hi Jimmy, It depends on the course format you took the course. I checked our roster and see that you didn’t complete it at a Code One Training Center so we can’t look this up unfortunately. If you took the Heartcode ACLS/PALS courses and came in for a skills test, you can claim your CE certificates through your AHA eLearning profile at https://elearning.heart.org
If you took the course fully in-person, there are no pre-approved CE hours from the American Heart Association, however, some licensing and professional boards will have prescribed hours that you can enter if you submit your AHA eCard to them. Your Training Center may also have approved hours that can be applied so you should contact the place you took the course.