Abstract
We report a survey of neurology residency program directors (PDs) and recent neurology residency graduates about the education provided during residency on functional seizures (FS), a subtype of functional neurological disorder (FND). The purpose of our study was to assess the education gap for neurology residents about FS since patients with FS are frequently seen by neurologists, who typically conduct the evaluation and share the findings with the patient. A survey was sent to 93 Neurology residency program directors and 71 recent graduates. We obtained a low response rate of 17%. Results of the survey revealed that the most frequent settings for education on FS were within a clinical rotation in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (68.8% of PDs and 88.7% of recent graduate respondents) and via a single didactic lecture (81.3% of PDs and 80.3% of recent graduate respondents). The majority of programs did not provide a curriculum for training and feedback on best practices in communicating the diagnosis or on evidence-based treatments. Eighteen percent of neurology residents reported not learning how to communicate the diagnosis of FS to patients, while 77% responded that they were not taught about treatment. These results illustrate a curriculum gap in what neurology residents are taught about diagnosis and management of FS (and FND). We propose a standardized model that can be adapted in residencies.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 100517 |
| Journal | Epilepsy and Behavior Reports |
| Volume | 18 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2022 |
Funding
Dr. Dworetzky receives funding from the A.J. Trustey Research Fund. The senior author reviewed a representative sample of medicine, psychiatry, and neurology residency and fellowship websites for their educational curricula and mentions of FND, including FS, as part of the needs assessment outcomes of the Nonepileptic Seizures Taskforce Workshop sponsored by the American Epilepsy Society (AES), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Workshop in 2014. This review found that there were no formal curricula that included FS, only a few programs mentioned teaching about FS as a differential diagnosis in epilepsy training, and none mentioned training beyond the differential diagnosis. Results of an American Epilepsy Society (AES) survey to its membership (Q-Pulse) confirmed the gap in training [13] . The authors thank the American Academy of Neurology for allowing administration of the survey to U.S. neurology residencies. Dr. Dworetzky receives funding from the A.J. Trustey Research Fund.
Keywords
- Education
- Functional neurological disorder
- Functional seizures
- Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Neurology
- Neurology
- Behavioral Neuroscience