Surgical Assistants licensed by the Texas Medical Board must complete 36 hours of continuing education (CE) every renewal cycle. The renewal cycle is biennial, running July 1 to June 30, and your CE reporting cycle lines up with your renewal cycle. (Renewals are staggered across even and odd years, so your own two-year cycle may start in either one depending on when you were first licensed.)
First Renewal requirements
If your first license cycle runs 24 months or longer, you complete the full standard requirement described below. If your first cycle is shorter than 24 months, you’re exempt from CE entirely for that first cycle.
Mandatory Subject Areas
| Requirement | Minimum Hours | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Formal Category 1 or 1A | 18 hours | The majority of your CE must come from AMA-, AOA-, or TMA-recognized Category 1 or 1A continuing education. |
| Medical Ethics and/or Professional Responsibility | 2 hours | Required every renewal. |
| Human Trafficking Training | Yes/No requirement (no fixed hour minimum) | Required every renewal. The course must specifically be approved by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) — other documentation won’t satisfy this one. Hours still count toward your 36-hour total, and they simultaneously satisfy the Medical Ethics and/or Professional Responsibility requirement (see below) unless they’re banked into a future cycle. |
The remaining hours needed to reach your 36-hour total (16 hours, based on the above) can come from any board-recognized CE in your profession.
A few general rules apply across all your hours: the minimum reportable CE activity is just 0.01 hours, and hours can be reported in increments as small as 0.01 hours. Unlike many boards, you’re allowed to repeat the same course for credit within the same biennium, and there are no delivery-method restrictions (no caps on home study, online courses, etc.).
Simultaneously Applying Hours
Human Trafficking Training hours simultaneously fulfill the Medical Ethics and/or Professional Responsibility requirement — unless those hours are banked into your next cycle (see below), in which case they only count as general Formal Category 1 or 1A hours.
Banking Excess Hours
You can carry up to 36 excess hours forward into your next renewal cycle. Banked Human Trafficking Training hours lose their special status once carried over — they can only be applied as general Formal Category 1 or 1A hours in the new cycle, not toward Human Trafficking or Medical Ethics again.
If you have excess CE hours from before you started using CE Broker, there’s a separate self-reporting option for that.