Continuing Education

Continuing Education Requirements

In addition to the payment of the license renewal fee, each licensee shall furnish to the Executive Officer evidence of completing 24 hours of continuing education each year - June 1st - May 31st, a total of 48 hours. Failure to obtain the correct number of C.E. each year will result in fines. View C.E.s that have been submitted to the OE Tracker since the last renewal Continuing education programs must be approved by the board in the year just preceding such application for license renewal. Additional guidelines are:

C.E. subjects must fall within the generally accepted optometric body of knowledge and must be pertinent to the clinical practice of primary care optometry and/or optometric sub-specialties. The Board recognizes the course category definitions as defined by the Council on Optometric Practitioner Education (COPE). Educational content of courses should be minimally at the level of courses taught at optometric colleges, and instructors should have education and credentials that would qualify them for at least adjunct instructor status at a college of optometry.
A maximum of four of the twenty-four hours required for re-licensure may be practice management courses. Five hours must be in ocular pharmacology, therapeutics or related topics of study approved by the State Board of Examiners in Optometry.
A maximum of twelve of the required twenty-four hours may be obtained from courses with a format other than live (e.g. web-based, magazine, correspondence, tape, CD, VCR). Alternative media courses with COPE approval offered by accredited institutions will be granted full C.E. credit. The Kansas Board of Examiners in Optometry reviews and accepts most COPE courses. CPR courses are not accepted.
No more than four of the 24 annually required hours of documented and approved continuing education may be obtained through observing ophthalmic surgery. Surgery observation is considered as non-live.
The Board prefers that an ophthalmic association, school, institute, or other organization sponsor the continuing education event.
A comprehensive program package outlining the following must be submitted for non-COPE approved courses:

Course Outline - 1.5 -2 pages per hour of presentation
Instructors
Date(s), Time(s)
Location
Course Description
Curriculum vita and/or biographical sketches of instructors
How sponsor will track and report attendance at the course

Non-COPE CE Application
The Board has the right to deny credit at license renewal time for any course work that is not COPE approved or submitted to the Board for approval prior to execution of the course.
Educational meetings will be closely monitored to assure strict adherence to the approved course outline for content and duration. Any deviation from content or duration, such as substitution for self promotion, referral requests, product endorsements, or anything else the board judges as deviating from the approved program may result in future rejection of the provider. Courses endorsing a particular product are not accepted. An hour of class credit must have at least 50 minutes of presentation to be counted as one hour.
The Kansas Board of Examiners in Optometry utilizes the ARBO OETracker system. It is strongly recommended that sponsors of continuing education apply for COPE approval and participate in this program, too. More information about this program may be obtained from the ARBO website.
License renewal is now on-line instead of submitting paper copies of renewal applications. Therefore, continuing education providers who do not apply for COPE approval should remit ARBO Non-COPE Upload Form with attendance directly to ARBO (arbo@arbo.org). This is in lieu of the paper certificate that has been required in the past.

Questions on course approvals should be directed to the Executive Officer of the Board.

Surgery Observation Form

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