You Asked Us
Every day, R.T.s message or call us to ask for information. Here are the answers to two of your most common questions.
Q: Why aren’t credentials earned before 2011 subject to Continuing Qualifications Requirements (CQR)?
We know this is a hot topic with some R.T.s. The simple answer is that, if you earned your credential(s) after Jan. 1, 2011, you knew that CQR would be part of your professional responsibilities.
Before 2011, we hadn’t made CQR a requirement for maintaining most ARRT credentials. (The exception is Registered Radiologist Assistants, who've always done CQR.) We didn’t think it was right to change our requirements after someone had earned a credential.
Keep in mind, though, that as time passes all practicing R.T.s will eventually have earned their credentials after Jan. 1, 2011. At that point, all R.T.s will come under the CQR umbrella.
Q: Why is there a difference between the overall credit value assigned to a continuing education (CE) activity and the credit distribution assigned per discipline?
The process of determining CE credits is a complex one.
First, CE Approvers evaluate learning activities to determine if the activities meet our requirements for CE. The evaluations cover such things as the activity’s educational objectives, its content, methods, and materials, and the qualifications of its faculty. If an activity meets our requirements, the CE Approver determines how many CE credits to award the activity.
If a CE Sponsor wants R.T.s to be able to use a CE activity for structured education and CQR, the sponsor requests a credit distribution from ARRT. To assign a credit distribution, ARRT compares the content of the CE activity to our discipline content outlines. We base our content outlines, of course, on work that R.T.s commonly perform in the profession.
It’s possible, then, that a CE Approver might award an activity two credits. But when we review the activity, we see that only half of it involves material that falls within our content outlines. For example, we don’t assign credit for information about a discipline’s history, emerging technology, or outdated technology. In that case, we might assign only one CE credit instead of two.