What Does COPE Do for State Boards of Optometry?
COPE decreases the amount of paper work currently required of licensing agencies to approve the hundreds of optometric continuing education (CE) courses reviewed by state boards annually. By endorsing a representative body (COPE) to review proposed continuing education courses on their behalf, each agency or state board no longer needs to review each individual course. At the same time, as the administration of courses is important to the overall effectiveness of CE, COPE reviews the procedures and policies of program administrators to assure compliance with reasonable standards. By centralizing and standardizing the method of obtaining CE credit for a course, COPE simplifies the review and approval process, benefiting not only boards of optometry, but also CE providers and practitioners.
