Best Echocardiography CME Courses: (Updated 2019) FREE and Paid

It’s been over 4 years since I’ve paid for a single echocardiography CME. And now that my 3 year CME period with ARDMS is coming to an end this year, I don’t plan on spending any of my own money on echocardiography continuing medical education this time either.

With all of the free online Echo CME resources that are available to us sonographers now days, there’s no reason any of us should have difficulty in maintaining our educational requirements without paying an absurd amount of money for echo cmes.

This year, I’m planning on not spending any of my own money on obtaining the 30 CME’s that are required to maintain my credentials with ARDMS. Here are the online resources that I'm using to do it.

What To Expect In This Post

I've scoured the internet for the best echo cme's that you can obtain online, and I've compiled them into a list for you.  

In this post, I'll share with you what I've found to be the best FREE echocardiography CME's as well as what I've found to be the best PAID Echocardiography CME's.

For those courses that I've familiar with, I will also provide a brief review of the website, course or company. 

Let's get started!

Best Free Echocardiography CME Courses

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1. International Center for Postgraduate Medical Education

Type Of Credits: AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)

This site offers a TON of free courses, however, at the time of this writing, there appeared to not be a huge selection for echocardiography specifically. Currently available at no cost, there is only one echo specific course.  

The free echocardiography cme course available is:

Contrast-enhanced Cardiac Ultrasound and is worth 1 cme. 

They offer live and recorded webinars.  A number of these courses are free CME courses, while some of them are for a fee.  

But with that said, there seems to always be new CME courses addeded. So this one is definitely worth taking a look at. 

2. Medscape

Type Of Credits: AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)

Medscape offers a treasure trove of free online Cardiology CME’s, which will work just fine for you if you're a cardiac sonographer.

From what I've seen, most of their mini courses seem to offer .25 cme each, but as you know, these small cme's can add up over time...and best of all,  they’re 100% free.

How To Use Medscape For Echo CME's

All you’re required to start obtaining your free online echo cme's is register for a free account with Medscape.  After that, you have access to essentially all the CME’s you could want.

How Medscape Organizes Their CME Courses

Medscape’s free cme courses are divided into 4 Cardiology Activity categories:

• Clinical Briefs
• Patient Cases
• Knowledge & Practice
• Journal Articles

3. MyCME

Type Of Credits: AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)

MyCME is another great source for free Cardiology CME's.   Even though at the time of writing this post, I was unable to confirm any echo specific CME's, I was able to confirm that there are general cardiology CME's that are available and free. 

The website is not very intuitive in my opinion, and it took me some time to really figure out where the Cardiac related CME's were and whether or not they were free or for a fee.

With that said, it's definitely worth your time to use MyCME if you're looking for no fee Echocardiography CME's. 

Here's a direct link to the cardiology related CME courses. 

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4. Gulfcoast Ultrasound Institute

Gulfcoast Ultrasound Institute offers a single course specifically geared towards Cardiac Sonographers, and this course will earn you 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s). 

The name of the CME course is POINT-OF-CARE ULTRASOUND FOR THE SONOGRAPHER and is approximately 1 hour and 18 minutes long. 

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Best Echocardiography CME's For A Fee

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1. CardioVillage

Type Of Credits: AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)

When I first wrote this article, Cardiovillage was a free source of echo cme.  However, they've now started to charge a fee for their cme courses. 

Even though they now charge a fee for their cardiology CME's, it's still one of my highly recommended online CME sources for echo and cardiology in general.   

CardioVillage provides  AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)  in cardiovascular medicine. As of today, they offer over a total of 81.5 hours of AMA PRA category 1 Continuing Medical Education credits.

The Cardiovascular CME courses are divided into 5 different topics.  All of which have their own set of subcategories.

• Coronary Artery Disease
• Echocardiography
• Interventional Cardiology
• Nuclear Cardiology
• Preventive Cardiology

How CardioVillage Works

CardioVillage works off of a Annual Memebership model.  At the time of this writing, it costs $149 per year to join and have access to all the courses. 

You can browse through their course catalog to get a good feel for what's available before you buy. 

It appears that most of the courses are fairly short in length and offer between .25 cme and 1 cme.  But this varies depending on the course you take. 

CardioVillage still seems like a really good option for Echocardiography Continuing Medical Education, even though it's not free any more.  

At $149, and for what you get, you can't go wrong.

Final Thoughts

It's a great time to be an echocardiographer. The machines we use just keep getting better and better as technology improves. 

The same is true when it comes to finding echocardiography continuing medical education credits that are not only online, but are free!

But don't let the fact that some of these might cost a little bit of money. It's a good thing to invest in yourself and in your career. 

I hope this list has helped you in at least a small way.  If you know of any additional sources of online echo cme courses, please drop me a message and tell me about them, and I'll add them to this list.