How Is Your Health?

Taking Online Classes to Fulfill AANA Continuing Education Requirements

by Camila Davidson

Medical professionals are required to have a certain number of continuing education credits to maintain their certifications and professional status. These continuing credits can be accomplished by in-class training, VILT (virtual instructor led training), or prerecorded lessons, presentations, and webinars.

Nurse anesthetists have specific requirements, just like other medical professionals, for continuing education. Since almost 90% of all practicing nurse nesthetists are members of AANA, AANA members should make sure to take classes for continuing education credits through valid providers of AANA classes.

Available Classes

There are a lot of different kinds of classes can you take to further your education, keep your certification current, and prepare for your exams. The majority of these classes, unless they are explicitly listed as classroom, are online. Topics range from cardiovascular systems, glands, and pharmacology to resuscitation and sleep apnea disorders, just to name a few. These classes must be taken through an accredited provider of education for AANA so that the AANA online credits from the course can be submitted towards your education tracking.

Reporting of Online AANA Credits

How those credits go into your profile for continuing education depends upon where you took the continuing education course. If you have taken one of the preparatory or continuing education courses through AANA, then upon completion of the course, your credits are updated through that AANA learning portal, or you can go and submit them via the AANA portal.

Third party educators that are accredited provide certificates of completion to certify that you have finished an online course. These continuing credits can also be registered to via the AANA portal to count towards your continuing certification credits.

When to Report Credits

Make sure you know when your new re-certification cycle starts. If you have completed all of your credits for the current re-certification period, then you don't want to submit more credits during the current period. Instead, you can register for the courses you need to take online now, but wait to take those courses and complete them once the new certification period starts. That way, your coursework will count towards your new period and requirements.

Finally, make sure that you have the right mix of Class A and Class B credits. Excess Class A credits can count towards your Class B credit requirements, but not vice versa, so make sure to look at your total commitment and plan accordingly when signing up for classes.

For more information on online AANA credits, talk to a provider like MyCEcredit.

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