Recertification FAQs
Eighteen contact hours of continuing education are required annually. There are two categories of continuing education activities:
- Category 1. A minimum of 6 hours is required. A category 1 activity is any continuing education activity specific to correctional health care, including any activity with health-related topics that is conducted in the correctional setting or with topics that address providing health services in a correctional setting.
- Category 2. A category 2 activity is any continuing education activity that is pertinent to your profession. These activities might include treatment updates at a hospital or health department, business management classes at a college or computer software seminars offered by private education companies. There is no minimum requirement for Category 2. If you submit 18 hours from Category 1, the recertification requirement will be met.
Minimum CE for categories 1 and 2 are applicable to everyone. However for CCHP, the hours can be general in nature, but for specialties, the total hours must be within that discipline, i.e., CCHP-MH: MH hours, CCHP-P: CME hours, CCHP-RN: nursing hours (as stated on the respective Recertification pages for each program).
Yes, you may claim 2 hours toward Category 1 and 4 hours toward Category 2.
A contact hour is the amount of time spent participating in a continuing education activity. If you attend an in-service from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., you earn 4 contact hours of continuing education toward recertification.
Yes. The 18 hours must be obtained during the one-year certification period that is expiring. For example, if your certificate is dated January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020, you must obtain at least 18 hours of continuing education between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020, in order to renew your certification for 2021.
No. Many valuable continuing education activities are conducted without formal CEUs or CMEs—for example, attending an in-service, writing an article for publication or presenting an educational program at a regional meeting. Time spent serving as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Correctional Health Care and other journals also counts. (Click here for information on becoming a JCHC peer reviewer.)
That depends. Continuing education credits earned from self-learning programs that have been approved by a professional association such as the AMA, ANA, ADA, AAPA, NCCHC, etc., are eligible toward recertification. Individual, nonsupervised self-learning programs are not eligible.
es. The recertification policies of the CCHP program are determined by the CCHP Board of Trustees and are not related to state licensure requirements. In some cases, the CCHP recertification requirement may be less than your state requires; in other cases, it may be more.
No. To make recertification easier, the CCHP Board of Trustees has eliminated the requirement for documentation of your continuing education activities (e.g., copies of certificates or sign-in sheets). Instead, you must sign a statement on the application for continuing certification verifying the accuracy of the information provided and your continued eligibility. All information you provide on the application for continuing certification is subject to audit, so it is highly recommended that you maintain a file of these documents in case your file comes under review.
Typically, you will receive certificates of attendance for each individual activity. Some facilities provide a printout of educational activities attended during the past year and these are acceptable, too. For in-services, sign-in sheets will suffice, and for college courses attended, a grade report or transcript will suffice. At a minimum, all documentation should provide the following information:
- Date of the continuing education activity
- Number of hours spent in the activity
- Title or subject of the activity
- Your name as a participant