News & Updates
CURRENT Continuing Education REQUIREMENTS
We automatically accept any COPE-approved CE, if it is not COPE-approved, it must be approved by this board at the next meeting. If it is not COPE approved, you must submit the attached “Non-COPE Approved Request†form with each course you are asking the board to review for approval.
UPCOMING EVENT CLARIFICATION
DEA Requirements: For those of you with DEA licenses, you may have received a notification that they are requiring additional CE in order to maintain your DEA certification. This mandate is separate from this state licensing board and does not impact your license to practice optometry in the State of South Dakota; however, you may still receive credit for attending this CE. It will still need to follow any of our state laws as listed in the summary above. Anything COPE-approved will be accepted. If not COPE-approved, you will need to submit the request for each course for approval using the attached form. If you attend this CE virtually, you will only be awarded the allowed 15 hours of self-directed learning.
South Dakota Optometric Society: Advanced Procedures Course July 20-23, 2023: You may have received information from the SDOS to register for this 32-hour COPE-approved course. If you attend, those 32 hours would apply toward your license requirements as listed in the summary above. The informational flyer that was sent out indicates that they will submit “Certification to the SD Board of Examiners in Optometryâ€, which is incorrect. These COPE hours will apply towards your 45 required each year; however, there’s no further certification that exists at this time, nor can it be advertised that you have completed further training. If the legislature approves expanded procedures at a later date, the training and requirements to measure competency for those procedures would also be determined at that time. This board has not sponsored or sanctioned this course. This is a presentation from the South Dakota Optometric Society and despite the statement about board certification, this board is not involved in this event.
EXCITING NEWS!
We are currently in the testing phase of a new, online renewal system. This will not only allow you to renew your license online, but you will be able to access your own accounts within our system which will give you access to update your personal information and view the continuing education we have on file for you. ARBO, and their OE Tracker program, are a separate organization from this board so you have always had to manually submit your OE Tracker reports to us. As part of this upgrade, we are also setting up a system with OE Tracker so that any of your COPE-approved CE will automatically import from OE Tracker over to our system. Any Non-COPE CE will be rejected, and you will still have to manually submit those to me for board approval using the attached document. You will receive more information regarding this transition with your license renewal packets in July.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to Deni Martin with any questions or concerns.