The COVID-19 epidemic has presented several new problems to the healthcare sector, arguably the least visible of which has been medical education. Trainees in a variety of specialties, including neurology, responded to the call to give treatment outside of their chosen specialization. In accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing requirements, all didactics, seminars, and in-person conferences for trainees were canceled. Prior to the pandemic, medical researchers predicted that a trainee’s cumulative medical knowledge will likely quadruple every 73 days by 2020. Trainees found it increasingly challenging to improve their previous medical knowledge and abilities throughout the epidemic. Learning to detect phenomenology and proceed with appropriate workup and management options depending on the individual’s clinical need is part of movement disorder training. It also entailed gaining experience in chemodenervation and sophisticated treatments, such as deep brain stimulation programming. Movement disorders fellowship programs had an educational goal that required fellows to be knowledgeable of the most recent achievements in the area, including available therapy trials for their patients.
This study, which included questions about the state of movement disorders education prior to COVID, revealed inequalities in depth, breadth, and consistency across fellowship programs. According to 45% of respondents, their training program organizes weekly didactics in movement disorders, with almost 40% indicating a frequency of less than once per week. A quarter of respondents said their training program had video rounds/video case discussions every two weeks, with 45% saying it happened once a month. Half of those polled reported monthly journal clubs, with a little less than a quarter reporting a longer gap between them. Faculty offered movement disorders didactics at their institution less than once a month, according to half of the respondents, with just 12% claiming a frequency of once a week.
Researchers want to share their experience through an online training series geared at filling gaps in fellowship education exacerbated by the epidemic in this post. This study also offered the idea of such an undertaking augmenting colleague training in a post-pandemic environment by addressing fellow feedback.
Reference:movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.28648
