Professional Education Committee
Kaiser GSAA
Mission Statement

Greater Southern Alameda Area (GSAA) encompasses the Fremont and San Leandro Kaiser hospital/medical centers and their satellite medical centers in Union City and Hayward (the Sleepy Hollow facility).

CME Purpose:  The goal of the Medical Staff Education Program is to promote and foster continuing medical education for the medical staff through activities focused on improving the health of our members in a culturally-responsive way.  By enhancing physician competence, the goal is to improve physician performance and ultimately to improve patient outcomes.  The program supports the mission of Kaiser Permanente, and in turn is supported by the institutions.

Content Areas:  The Medical Staff Education Program implemented by the Professional Education Committee is committed to increasing health care clinicians’ professional knowledge and skills, as well as broadening their understanding of the non-medical determinants of the health of their patients.  This is accomplished through both general overview topics as well as specialty-specific programming.  A theme running through our programs is the continual improvement in our staff’s ability to communicate with our patients and each other and to improve our provision of culturally competent care.  

Target Audience:  The Medical Staff Education Program provides, in accordance with the standards set forth by the California Medical Association Accreditation Program, Category I CME educational programs to physicians, podiatrists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other providers in multiple departments in and throughout the Medical Center.

Types of Activities:  Programs are based, as often as possible, upon the findings generated by the Quality Assurance Program of the Medical Center and in support of the patient safety and quality goals of Northern California Kaiser Permanente Region, as well as on other methods of needs assessment.  Formats range from didactic lectures to more interactive processes such as panels, workshops and teleconferencing via both video and TEAMS virtual meetings.  Case-based presentations are emphasized and treatment recommendations are evidence based.  We accept no commercial support.

Expected Results: for our educational activities are measured at the initial level in changes in our physician’s competence, initially as self-reported by the individual physician.  Where possible we try to use ETHOS survey case-based scenarios to test attendees ability to incorporate learnings in clinical scenarios.  We also strive to assess the intent to change practice by including pertinent ETHOS survey questions after each activity.  Where data is available we will measure changes in outcome associated with our educational activities.   This is done by review of our quality reports and of the results of regional patient surveys.   These continual measurements of our programs’ effectiveness enable continual quality improvement in our programs.

Francis Tambunting, MD

Chief of Education - San Leandro

francis.tambunting@kp.org