NEED FEEDBACK: Medical school offers courses for personal trainers

[Tyler300]

I need your help! Please give me your feedback on 3 questions.

I'm working with a top American medical school to develop courses for personal trainers on how to work safely and effectively with people with various chronic diseases and conditions. The courses are all online. They'll be interactive, case-based, with several mini-quizzes, and some required participation in forums. No big final test. The courses each will take about 2-4 hours to complete. Everyone who completes the course will receive a Certificate of Completion from the medical school.

3 QUESTIONS:
1. Does having a Certificate of Completion for a course sponsored by a medical school appeal to you? Why?
2. What would you pay for each course to be able to earn a Certificate like this?
3. Must the Certificate also come with CE credits or is the Certificate enough to let people know that you have special training from a medical school?

Thanks very much for your help!

 

[Kallisthenos]

A few thoughts..

There are lots of certs out there already dealing with special populations. Some have big names that already carry weight and have extensive partnerships in medicine and science. The biggest of these organizations, the American College of Sports Medicine, has very high quality certifications dealing with fitness professionals and chronic diseases in clinical and other settings. How are you competing with these and others?

If it's a quality course with a strong name it could be quite valuable to the trainer in terms of practice and marketing. The type of cert is very practical and marketable. Training is growing across the board and our aging population combined with a strong societal focus on health issues means a cert like this could open doors.

What's special about what you are going to offer? Why shouldn't I be concerned that I'm going to pay and study for a 2-4 hour test on things ACE addressed years ago?

Also, not to seem rude but I got a bit of a cynical gut reaction from the the combination of "new cert for trainers" and "medical school." The medical community is invaluable to professional fitness, but I worry some in medicine believe their knowledge and skill somehow supersede the entire scope of practice of a fitness instructor. No doubt medical considerations are completely necessary but a strong command of histology, physiology and pharmacokinetics doesn't translate into insight on the business of making people move for a living.

Will this have accreditation from anyone other than the med school? Is this a clinical level or just an ancillary certification for trainers? If its just the med school name behind a simple ancillary cert the I view CE as more of a residual profit generator and be turned off.