Harris L. Cohen, MD, FACR, FSRU, FAIUM, FSPR, looks back on his career and how CPI has grown into the successful program it is.
The ACR continuously looks for ways to provide its members with resources to grow and succeed in the specialty. One way the College has done this for over two decades has been through the ACR Continuous Professional Improvement (CPI) program. CPI gives members a chance to earn CME through expert-created self-assessment modules, allowing participants to work at their own pace while gaining valuable educational experience. Harris L. Cohen, MD, FACR, FSRU, FAIUM, FSPR, has been one of the key figures behind the success of CPI, serving as its editor-in-chief since 2008. The Bulletin recently spoke with Cohen to discuss his career and the growth of the CPI program.
I pursued a career in radiology because my facility, SUNY Downstate, had the leading educator in radiology in the United States, Lucy Frank Squire, teaching a course. It was the best medical school course you could take. Squire was the key author of several radiology educational texts for medical students. I chose to specialize in fetal and pediatric imaging, as well as small parts imaging, because of my interest in diagnostic ultrasound, which was a new, key state-of-the-art imaging tool for those areas in the early 1980s.
I adored the Physician Self Evaluation syllabus book series the ACR put out, used predominantly by people prepping for the boards. When I was a resident, there were 16 total volumes, and as editor-in-chief, I had the good fortune of editing volumes 49–53 of this series. My personal goal was to be the editor of the syllabus series. In 1999, there was a call for anyone who wanted to be editor, and I applied and became the editor of the syllabus series. It took one to two years to produce each edition of these books. We approached star and superstar (i.e., leading subspecialty) editors and authors to produce the individual CPI modules, each with subspecialty-centered content. The syllabus series ended in 2010, and the ACR asked me if I wanted to help revitalize the CPI program. This was an annual subscription service that started by publishing four to six modules per year. Now we’re back to releasing four educational modules per year based on the same subspecialty topics that we focused on in the syllabus series. As editor, I decided CPI’s content would include excellent images, information and educational pearls for the people working in these areas, but with a somewhat lower number of pages than in a classic syllabus. Each CPI module is designed to include questions with four to five answer choices, images to be evaluated, an explanation of those images and the correct answers as well as the incorrect answers, all with additional imaging examples, if needed.
During my editorship we have published 81 modules (and e-books) over 16 years. Accomplishments included getting outstanding educators involved, creating current modules in standard ABR testing specialty topics, plus adding new “special edition” topics, like body MRI, head and neck, and emergency imaging, that may have been given lesser degrees of emphasis because they were more peripheral topics. For example, I created one with Dorothy I. Bulas, MD, FACR, on Perinatal Imaging, a topic that in the past would not have received more than a couple of questions in either an ultrasound or genitourinary imaging module.
The first Editor’s Choice module released in 2024 in breast imaging. It was an attempt to do something that I had seen when I was a house officer (interns, residents and fellows) in radiology. There were two Seminars in Roentgenology journals on hand, and I said, “This stuff’s great.” The printing house was smart enough to realize the seminars were so good that they took the two and combined them into a book for purchase. The CPI Editor’s Choice module is similar. It’s a waste to not get excellent content to as large an audience as possible. Combining CPI cases from several CPI modules into a larger educational resource is our goal.
In creating the next Editor’s Choice module, scheduled to be released in 2025 in pediatric imaging, we experimented with choosing the best of previously published pediatric imaging cases from pediatric, obstetrical, head and neck and neuroradiology CPI modules. I then went to five trainees in pediatric imaging at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital / University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and I asked them to review the questions and answers for cases they thought were best. They reviewed the images, answers and references. They came up with their best-of-the-best case list and I compared it to my best-of-the-best case list. We then determined the chosen 70 cases based on those cases we agreed were excellent.
It’s a waste to not get excellent content to as large an audience as possible.
My goal in that role is to make sure that under the new editor-in-chief, Jennifer L. Pierce, MD, everything continues in this upward trajectory. I am hoping to pass the baton to the next generation. I can also maintain a connection with a goal to help Dr. Pierce continue CPI’s upward trajectory. Dr. Pierce is currently the chief of musculoskeletal ultrasound at the University of Virginia, where she supervises the increasing number of diverse ultrasound examinations, therapeutic procedures and injections for pain in the musculoskeletal division.
We hope to increase the CPI readership among trainees studying for certifying exams. CPI has usually been marketed to general radiologists in practice as well as subspecialists, but I have seen with my own trainees and with some of my younger attendings that the modules have been very helpful to them in learning information from various subspecialties. It is a great tool.
Interview by Alex Utano, associate editor, ACR Press
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