CME Credit for the Book You Already Read

November 04, 2026

EPISODE SUMMARY

What if the books you've already read could count toward your continuing medical education? In this episode of the Academic Medicine Strategy Podcast, Kirsten Bombdiggity, Chief Education Officer at AMedSG, introduces CME By the Book, a program that connects physician reading and reflection with CME credit.

Kirsten explains how the idea developed from a physician learning group where conversations about a book sparked meaningful changes in how participants approached their careers, meetings, negotiations, and patient advocacy. She walks through how the program works, how physicians complete book-specific reflections, and how they can earn CME credit for learning that is relevant to their professional lives.

The program allows physicians to choose books that interest them, reflect on what they learned, and connect those insights to their work and careers.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

00:00 – Introducing CME By the Book
Kirsten Bombdiggity introduces herself as AMedSG's Chief Education Officer and explains why CME By the Book was created. The program helps physicians connect reading, reflection, and professional development.

01:00 – The Book That Inspired the Program
Kirsten shares how a discussion about Likable Badass by Alison Fragale during a physician support group led to an engaging conversation about career identity, negotiation, leadership, and patient advocacy.

02:00 – Why Reading Should Count Toward CME
The group experienced meaningful learning, but none of the reading or discussion counted toward CME. Kirsten explains how this gap inspired the creation of CME By the Book.

03:00 – Turning Reading Into Meaningful Reflection
Reading introduces new ideas, but reflection helps physicians apply them. Each book has a structured reflection designed to connect the content to a physician's career and professional decisions.

04:00 – How CME By the Book Works
Physicians bring their own books, whether purchased, borrowed, or already on their shelves. They complete the corresponding reflection and earn CME credit based on the book's length and the time required for reading and reflection.

05:00 – CME Credit, Certificates, and Program Details
Kirsten explains the credit structure, six-month access to each reflection, downloadable certificates, and the program's accreditation through the ISMA as an ACCME-accredited provider.

06:00 – Books Available in the Catalog
Kirsten highlights books including Atomic Habits, The Physician's Guide to Owning Your Time by Dr. Stacey Ishman, and A Prescription for Caring in Healthcare Leadership by Dr. Joshua Hartzell.

07:00 – CME Books for Time Management and Leadership
The catalog includes books on habits, time management, leadership, influence, mindset, self-care, and the meaning of medicine.

08:00 – Choosing Books Based on Your CME Needs
Kirsten explains how physicians can select shorter or longer books depending on their interests and credit needs. Reflections range from approximately two to eight CME credits.

09:00 – Explore the CME By the Book Catalog
The catalog has 20 books available at the time of recording, with plans to expand to 25 before the end of the year. Physicians can also purchase reflection bundles for approximately 20% off the retail price.

10:00 – Read, Reflect, and Earn Your Credit
Kirsten invites physicians to suggest books that have made a difference in their professional lives. She closes with the program's central idea: physicians already read to grow, and CME By the Book gives that growth the credit it deserves.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Can physicians earn CME credits by reading books?

Yes. Through CME By the Book, physicians can complete book-specific reflections based on books they have read or listened to and earn CME credit for the reading and reflection time.

Do I need to purchase a book through CME By the Book?

No. Physicians bring their own books. They can purchase a book through Amazon, listen through Audible, borrow it from a library, or use a copy they already own.

How does CME By the Book work?

Physicians select a book from the catalog, complete its corresponding reflection questions, and submit their responses. Each reflection connects the book's ideas to the physician's work and career.

How many CME credits can physicians earn?

According to Kirsten, reflections in the catalog range from approximately two to eight credits, depending on the length of the book and the time allocated for reading and reflection.

What does the CME By the Book reflection include?

Each book has a structured reflection with questions designed to generate ideas, consider future decisions, and connect the material to the physician's career. Every reflection ends by asking physicians to describe their greatest takeaway and how they plan to apply it to their work and career.

How long do physicians have to complete a reflection?

Each reflection includes six months of access, giving physicians time to complete the reading and reflection.

Where can physicians browse the book catalog?

Physicians can explore the available books and reflections at https://www.amedsg.com/cmebythebook.

EPISODE TAKEAWAY

Reading can introduce ideas, but reflection helps turn those ideas into meaningful changes in how physicians work, lead, and manage their careers. CME By the Book gives physicians a way to earn CME credit for learning they already value.

YOUR NEXT STEP

Think about the last book that changed how you practice medicine, lead a team, or manage your time. Visit CME By the Book to see whether it is available in the catalog.

ABOUT THE HOST

Kirsten Bombdiggity is the Chief Education Officer at Academic Medicine Strategy Group (AMedSG). With a background in middle school English education, she brings her passion for reading, learning, and reflection to physician professional development.

Kirsten helped develop CME By the Book, a program that connects physician reading with structured reflection and continuing medical education credit.

EXPLORE CME BY THE BOOK: https://www.amedsg.com/cmebythebook

Browse the book catalog, choose a title that interests you, complete its reflection, and earn CME credit for your learning.

Work With Us:

If you're interested in working with Academic Medicine Strategy Group, visit www.amedsg.com to learn about our programs that help academic physicians build a clear, strategic path to promotion, research, and career advancement.

Leaders can also explore the Faculty Excellence and Retention Initiative (FERI) to learn about faculty development and retention support at www.amedsg.com/feri.

Rate, Review, and Follow:

Please RATE, REVIEW, and FOLLOW the Academic Medicine Strategy Podcast on your favorite platform.

If you'd like to get in touch or suggest a topic:

DM Stacey on Instagram at @sishmancoach
Email [email protected]
Visit www.amedsg.com

Episode Transcript

CME Credit for the Book You Already Read
===

Speaker: [00:00:00] What is the last book that you remember reading that changed how you practice medicine or lead a team or manage your time? I'm Kirsten Bombdiggity, and I'm excited to be hosting this week's episode of the Academic Medicine Strategy podcast. Academic physicians teach the next generation, they push medicine forward, and they take on the hardest cases.

Speaker: But when they leave, we all lose. So this show is about helping them and the people who lead them build careers where physicians can thrive. So if we haven't met yet, I'm the Chief Education Officer at AmedSG. I started out my career many decades ago teaching middle school English, and so I'm just gonna say that a pile of books is home turf for me, and I'm just really excited to be telling you about our new program, CME By the Book.

Speaker: Today's episode is for every physician, academic or private practice, that if you've ever read a book that changed how you work, this one's for you. So, um, it all started, Stacey had secured a grant through the [00:01:00] Women in Otolaryngology where, um, we were able to offer support for weekly meetings for a few months to fifteen women who were in their first ten years of practice.

Speaker: And one of the unscripted benefits of this group meeting was that there was a doctor one week who talked about a book that had changed her whole mindset and identity about being a physician, and that book was this, Likable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve by Alison Fragale. And the wonderful thing about this was not only this contagious joy that we all fed into as she talked about how it had given her new ideas and helped her think differently, but she wasn't the only one in the group that had actually read the book and was passionate about it.

Speaker: So there were three of them, and, um, and they were just sharing ideas, and me too, and this was my favorite part, and, "Oh, I used this to think about that." And, and it was just wonderful, and it was so contagious, in fact, that by the [00:02:00] end of this session, we were actually-- we had all read the book. We had-- we're all in love with the book.

Speaker: We were all fan- Alison Fragale fans. And it was just, it was incredible to see so much learning going on, so much conversations that changed how people were showing up, how they negotiated, how they ran a meeting, how they were able to advocate for their patients. Um, it was, it was wonderful. But the challenge for me, the frustrating part for me as an educator, was that not one minute of this book counted towards anyone's CME.

Speaker: And so the book was doing the teaching, the conversation was doing the reflecting, and so all that was missing was the credit. And so that's how CME By the Book was born So every fall, um, comes for many-- if you're in private practice, and it's different time frames depending on if you're at different institutions.

Speaker: But whenever the calendar year ends for you with your CME budgets, there is something incredibly painful about watching that money go nowhere. It's like someone [00:03:00] took part of your compensation plan and just burned it in front of your face or threw it out the window. And so part of what we're excited about this program is that, you know, oftentimes one of the things that people do when they are faced with those decisions is maybe they're signing up for conferences that, that they're not very passionate about.

Speaker: But then they've got days away from clinic or days away from their family, and they're traveling. And then on the other end of things, we also have people who are like, "Oh, this one is zero credit. I need the credits, but, you know, this one's a freebie." But, you know, a week later, they couldn't even tell you what it was that they had studied.

Speaker: And so the idea that there was a way that we could take something that people were excited about, real conversations, real learning, real transformation. We could take these books that are sitting on their nightstands or sitting on their bookshelves or that they listened to on tape when they were driving on their last family vacation.

Speaker: Um, you know, all of that was really powerful. So I think reading plants the idea or listening to [00:04:00] it if you're an auditory learner. Um, but reflection is where it really, really takes root. So we have a reflection for every book that we have, every title that we work with, and we ask you to think about it in five different ways.

Speaker: So some of them are like, help you generate ideas. Another one is like you look ahead at what could happen. Maybe you're making a decision or you're building a plan, and then you're putting it all like into your words. So the questions are about ideas and your own career. There's no made-up scenarios. Um, every reflection ends with the same question: describe your greatest takeaway from the content and how you plan to apply it to your work and your career.

Speaker: And no matter where you are in career, at what stage, this is something that can, can change. And so, -- this is a little bit how the program works now. So you bring the book, and we bring the credit. We aren't booksellers. You can get it on Amazon. You can listen to it on Audible. You can get it from the library.

Speaker: You can take it off of your shelf if you already own it and have read it. So what you're actually buying from us is the CME reflection. [00:05:00] So CME credit runs twenty-five dollars per credit hour, but the price of each just depends on the length of the book. So the reflection time is included, the answering the question time is included, and then the reading or listening time is included.

Speaker: So thicker the book, the more credit. And the credit includes the time to answer those questions because we want you having that thinking time. So for example, da, da, da, da, Atomic Habits is in our library, four point seven five AMA PRA category one credits. So that's this particular book. And, um, and every reflection comes with a one-page learner summary.

Speaker: It also comes with a certificate that you can download right away, um, as soon as you turn in your reflection. And it comes with six months for you to do your reflection for-- so you have six months of access to that reflection. So we are accredited through the ISMA as an ACCME to ACCME standards, and so we are the, the CME provider, accredited provider [00:06:00] directly.

Speaker: Um, so every book in the catalog has to connect to a physician and help them explain how they feel about or approach their career. So here's a few of them. Like we started with Atomic Habits. Um, habits shape charting. They shape teaching, recovery time, how a team runs. So wonderful book if you haven't read it and would be a wonderful resource for people.

Speaker: Next book I wanna tell you about that we have accredited is Dr. Stacey Ishman, founder of AMedSG. Woo-hoo. So this book has just been the mo-- it just released recently. It hit number one in three Amazon categories in its opening week. It's written for physicians about their time. Um, one of the chapters is called Why Physicians Are Uniquely Trapped.

Speaker: And what I love are all the tools she packs in here, all the stories, all of the lessons she learned as she learned how to like build people's toolkits and how to be untrapped. So, and one other book that I wanna make sure that I give props to is this one, Dr. Joshua Hartzell. Josh [00:07:00] is an amazing human being.

Speaker: If you are not connected with him on LinkedIn, you should be because he is a resource of knowledge, a source of inspiration, so positive, so supportive, and this book covers so much. And I love the whole concept that care is actually a leadership skill. And yes, it's a lot to read, and it's a beautiful book to read.

Speaker: And then after it's on your shelf, you will find yourself going back to different earmark sections as those different scenarios come into your world. So wonderful book. Eight credits for this one. So we have a few different themes that travel throughout the CME catalog. Um, we've got one that's just on, um, habits and time.

Speaker: So if your days feel like they run you, this is a great place to start. We've got like The One Thing, Atomic Habits, Buy Back Your Time, 10x is Easier Than 2x, The 5 AM Club, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So, um, that is a wonderful [00:08:00] thing and a great place to start if you are just feeling overwhelmed and underwater with time management.

Speaker: Um, there's a section for leadership and influence for the physicians who lead a team or wanna lead a team, lead a division or a room, or just the leadership that it just shows up in, in advocating for those, um, around you. So we've got Dare to Lead in that, How to Win Friends and Influence People, uh, Self-Awareness and Trust.

Speaker: So we've also got a theme section on mindset and self-care, how you take care of yourself and how that shows up at work. And in there we've got, um, The Likable Badass, we've got the Don't Believe Everything You Think, we've got Think and Grow Rich. So older books, newer books, credits ranging anywhere from two point two five credits to seven point five.

Speaker: You can start at the short end if you want a quick win. Um, and then there's also the Meaning of Medicine, where we have Being Mortal in there, and then Josh's book on a Prescription for Caring in Healthcare Leadership. So across the catalog, reflections run from about two to eight [00:09:00] credits, so you can match the book to the credit that you need.

Speaker: You can browse the whole catalog at cmebythebook.com. So that's cmebythebook.com. There are twenty books to pick from right now. We're gonna get that up to twenty-five before the end of the year. And if you're interested in more than one, you can also buy a reflection bundle, and that'll help you save like 20% off of the retail price.

Speaker: Um, I just, I am very passionate about this program. We would love to hear what kind of books that you've read that have been transformative for you so that we can include them in the library. Um, that's part of the fun is like a lot of the titles that are in our catalog are because physicians that were helping us test the program came forward and said, "This was a book that really made a difference for me."

Speaker: And we were like, "Great," and we folded that into the program. And so we're excited to see how this program grows, and I'm, I'm just really... I'm happy. If you have questions about it, feel free to send us, um, a message, but physicians are some of the most curious, [00:10:00] amazing learners that I know, and I know that you read because you want to grow.

Speaker: So CME By the Book gives you that growth, the credit it deserves. So read the book, reflect on it, earn your credit, and, uh, we'll see you at CME By the Book. That has been this week's episode of our podcast, and we will see you next week. Thanks everybody.