Alright, I’ve got a few tips for you.  

The first is to view it as an essential and important part of your practice.  It’s not just a box to tick, it keeps you up-to-date and makes sure your provide the best care possible. 

Second, integrate it with your daily work- choose topics that are related to the types of patients you usually care for.  This keeps it relevant and helps the information stick. 

Third, focus on what interests you.  Do you love pharmacology? Patient education?  Choose training courses that you know you’ll enjoy!

Fourth, sometimes you can use downtime at work to complete some online training- check with your manager- but it’s always nice to get these things done at work rather than having to use your time off for it. 

Fifth, make sure you keep track of your certificates and your hours so that when it’s time to renew your license you don’t have to spend days looking for everything.  

Okay, so where should you look to find CE’s?  A great place to start is professional journals.  Honestly, you can just google professional nursing journals to find a list to start from.  Nursingcentre.com has a great list and I’ve included this in the links for this lesson. Another great way to look for CE’s is to search for professional organizations associated with your specialty.  Some examples are, The Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, or the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. These websites will likely offer CE’s, some free some not, but they will also probably have conferences happening throughout the year where you can knock out a bunch of CE’s at once. 

Some consistent websites to find free CE’s are medscape.com.  I actually use medscape a lot. And then also Nurse.com.