Free Online Training Modules Hoped to Attract More Students to Psychiatry

A free, open-access library of online learning modules about core psychiatric diagnoses, developed by medical school psychiatry educators, appears to be attracting a growing national and international audience of students and educators.

The Association of Directors of Medical School Education in Psychiatry (ADMSEP) Clinical Skills Initiative (CSI) is an online library of publicly available educational video modules. It is the first clinician-generated, national e-platform for medical students in psychiatry and fills a gap in content left by commercial educational sites—such as MedU, which does not include content in psychiatry.

Because the modules are open access to the public, they hold the promise of helping to attract students to the field of psychiatry.

“The CSI modules prepare the medical students and the future workforce by providing high-quality examples of common psychiatric disorders and help further medical student understanding about how to better interface with patients,” said Brenda Roman, M.D., a past president of ADMSEP and assistant dean for curriculum and medical education research in the Office of Medical Education at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine. “Since the modules are available to the public on the ADMSEP website, they could be used for more general patient and public education about common psychiatric disorders.”

The modules, which are peer reviewed, are also posted on Mededportal.org, an open repository of peer-reviewed resources sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Today, the CSI project comprises 10 modules covering the psychiatric interview, adolescent depression, childhood posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insomnia, adult PTSD, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, neurocognitive disorders, and psychotic disorders. A least six other modules are in various stages of development.

“This curriculum helps supplement live patient exposure and is a very versatile tool that can be incorporated into various types of teaching for students from the first year in medical school through junior residency years,” Adrianna Foster, M.D., co-chair of the ADMSEP CSI project and vice chair for clinical and research programs at Florida International University Wertheim College of Medicine.

Her co-chair is Raed Hawa, M.D., director of undergraduate medical education in psychiatry and deputy director of the psychiatry clerkship program at the University of Toronto.

The project was initiated in 2010 by Howard Liu, M.D., and Martin Klapheke, M.D. In an interview with Psychiatric News, Liu said that guidelines from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education require that students must have a learning experience with all of the core diagnoses in each clerkship specialty. “If they don’t have an actual patient encounter, you have to find some way to simulate that experience,” he said.

Liu and Klapheke brought together an initial cohort of interested educators, found software for publishing videos and text-based didactic material, and began to develop their own modules.

“Our goal was to gather together modules on all of the core diagnoses in DSM,” he said. “We decided we were going to be the garage-band version of MedU for psychiatry and make online learning modules free to the public. It’s been a learning curve, but the project has taken off.”

Each module includes a text description and educational objectives on the opening page; the live modules include didactic text material as well as videos of standardized patients being interviewed by senior faculty.

In the last year, the modules have had 45,089 page views, or approximately 123 views a day, and 43 percent of all the visits to the ADMSEP website. Moreover, more recent figures reveal the CSI web pages were viewed in over 30 different countries. Module authors are provided Google Analytic data on viewership, which provides feedback as well as documentation of their module’s dissemination.

In addition to full-length modules, brief video clips excerpted from the full modules are also available for some of the diagnoses. These clips can be used in a number of ways—to briefly illustrate clinical material during a lecture or learning-on-the-fly teaching rounds and to stimulate small group discussions. The CSI task force is encouraging ADMSEP members to use these video clips for teaching purposes, as long as attribution is given to the module authors.

In addition to Foster, Hawa, Liu, and Klapheke, the ADMSEP CSI Task Force includes Michael Marcangelo, M.D., of the University of Chicago; Hendry Ton, M.D., of the University of California, Davis; Susan Lehmann, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; David Schilling, M.D., of Loyola University Chicago; and Brian Smith, M.D., of Michigan State University.

Hawa told Psychiatric News that members of the CSI project welcome the submission of new modules. He said the project is attracting an international audience of educators and students who have a new venue to communicate with each other. “We are creating this online community of people who can talk to each other outside of the traditional classroom,” he said.

Also, Hawa believes that the CSI project can help attract more students to psychiatry.

“I think the accessibility of the learning modules can help students feel more comfortable learning about psychiatry—students who might otherwise be uncomfortable because of stigma, unknown issues working with patients with psychiatric illness, and what they hear on the news,” he said. “The ability to see patients being interviewed by competent professionals and learning how to engage a patient, identify pitfalls, and identify ways to improve can make students feel much more safe. Once they are comfortable, they can begin to explore the field on their own.” ■

The ADMSEP CSI modules can be accessed here.