Welcome to the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy
For physicians and healthcare professionals who value the highest standards of clinical care, the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Academy dedicates itself to providing world-renowned postgraduate education that improves clinical practice and leads to better lives for patients and their families. Advanced teaching methods, an interactive learning format, and focus on solving real-world, practice-related challenges give the MGH Academy international recognition for helping providers effectively diagnose and treat a compendium of diseases and illnesses.
Since its founding in 2005, the Academy has tapped into its rich internal resources and infrastructure to implement comprehensive education programs that now consists of web-based seminars and simulations, satellite symposia, teleconferences, and live symposia. The faculty, staff and consultants who commit their time to each project are leaders in their respective fields. These collaborative efforts have enabled the MGH Academy to develop and design innovative educational programs, contribute to medical literature, and demonstrate the skills of expert clinician researchers who emphasize practical clinical applications in their teaching.
Instructional design of all MGH Academy programs is determined by a thorough needs assessments, identification of knowledge gaps, analysis of the literature, and national policy priorities that address the ever-changing landscape of healthcare redesign.
Today, Academy membership has reached more than 21,000 healthcare professionals in more than 120 countries around the world and 10,000 patients and their loved ones. Our recent migration to mobile electronic platforms such as iTunes and the MGH Academy App has fostered the dissemination of 100,000 learning activities per year.
The sequential, iterative, and interactive learning environment the MGH Academy provides through its programs and website generates related and meaningful future educational offerings.
Background and Philosophy
In 2003, the MGH Academy assessed a number of critical and transformative developments in the field of postgraduate provider education including:
- Rapid development and adoption of new teaching methods and technologies.
- Increasing need to document the effect of education programs on provider practice and quality patient care.
We felt strongly that there were critical shortcomings in the ways in which provider postgraduate education was evolving and in 2005 the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy was launched with the plan of building upon and broadening our experience in provider education. Tens of thousands of providers participated in the MGH Psychiatry Academy’s board examination review courses that covered diverse topics such as the basic neurosciences and genetics, cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, socio-cultural aspects of symptom expression, natural remedies, medical co-morbidity, child and adult psychopharmacology, and the medical legal aspects of psychiatric practice.
Following upon the success of the Psychiatry Academy, in 2008 the Massachusetts General Hospital Academy was formed; together they comprise the largest department-based education program at MGH.
Our outreach to potential participants relies on internal as well as external databases. As a result of successful program outreach, a typical MGH Academy member participates in an average of five programs per year in multiple therapeutic areas that include psychiatry, oncology, cardiology, neurology and transplantation.
Recent Academy Achievements
- Recipient of the 2011 Professionalism Article Prize from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation. Published articles appear in peer-reviewed journals and posters presentations are made at national meetings.
- Examples of recently presented tuition-based courses : the 35th Annual Psychopharmacology Conference; ADHD Across the Lifespan, Difficult to Treat Depression; the 2nd annual seminar on Complexities and Challenges of PTSD and TBI, and programs on mood disorders for visiting psychiatrists from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and The Bahamas as part of an international collaboration with La Asociación Civil de Investigación y Desarrollo en Salud (ACINDES), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Selected tuition-free courses recently presented: Advances in Management of Chronic Pain; Advances in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Pain; Management of GI Malignancies and Dysplasia; Management of Early Metastatic Melanoma
- Held five patient and family education programs: Complementary and Alternative Medicine; 9th Annual Schizophrenia Day; Current Issues in Youth Sports; Trauma and Loss; and Unipolar and Bipolar Depression
- Addition of innovative archived web-based education to our portfolio. Single subject tutorials included five ADHD webcasts; a series of webcasts, interactive learning modules, and clinical simulations from the Difficult to Treat Depression program; a PTSD in Couples webcast from a MSPCC training; and a webcast on Advances in Managing Chronic Pain. A tuition-based online course on CBT Basics was successfully launched in mid-2011.
- Provide online live, interactive, and archived grand rounds to academic institutions and individuals. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th iterations of our Virtual Grand Rounds Series was launched and for the first time included international participants from Canada, Nigeria and India.
- Maintenance of Certification (MOC) : Inaugural MOC self-assessment module instituted for the 35th edition of the MGH Psychopharmacology Course. Currently developing seven additional modules to help providers meet ABMS requirements for recertification.
Development and Adoption of Teaching Methods and Technologies
The MGH Academy incorporates basic principles of learning methodology into our educational programming. From its inception, every program is conceived with the end in mind. Our qualitative and quantitative market research conducted with hundreds of multidisciplinary providers across the country has highlighted the importance of fully incorporating peer-to-peer and faculty-to-peer learning as the background of our curriculum format. These findings complement research showing that passive learning in traditional lecture formats does not lead to increased retention and utilization rates.
To address these complex challenges and provide participants with a learning environment that is best suited to achieving your learning objective goals, we have developed a program design that utilizes a multi-dimensional, sequential, and iterative learning environment of interrelated educational activities.
This learning model is one in which each activity is completed in a specific order for optimal learning and retention of key concepts. The format moves from a broad overview to applying specific learning points in a simulated clinical environment.
The Academy’s typical sequential design.
STEP ONE: Live Symposia or Webcast
Expert speakers provide broad overviews in areas in which there is a demonstrated knowledge gap. Talks range from 45 minutes to 1 hour and often consist of case reviews and a panel discussion. Live presentations and case reviews will be videotaped and converted to an archived webcast that you can view on this website. Like the participants in the live symposium, if you view the archived webcasts you will also be able to respond to questions and have your responses entered into the program database.
STEP TWO: Interactive Learning Module (ILM)
Developed from the analysis of the data from the live presentation or webcast, our Interactive Learning Module (ILM) enables you the opportunity to further engage in your learning. Each ILM is a 30-minute web-based tutorial presenting PowerPoint slides with audio voice-over and embedded video clips. After a specific learning point is made, the content slides are paused and a multiple choice question is presented to assess understanding of the material. Depending on the answer, the participant may be asked to complete additional, short (5-minute) web tutorials; this real-time evaluation of knowledge allows for additional remediation if there are demonstrated knowledge gaps, thereby providing a learning experience that is dynamically customized to the needs of individual learners.
STEP 3: Computer Simulation Assessment Tool (CSAT)
A pilot study has suggested that interactive simulation has been shown to be a reliable representation of a clinician’s performance in practice, and allows for assessment of the impact of MGH Academy educational interventions.
The CSAT goes beyond “test taking” by immersing the learner in a virtual clinical encounter that reflects the themes discussed in the ILM and asks them to experience this new knowledge in a virtual clinical encounter. There are four sections to this virtual encounter: Introduction, Simulation, Virtual Note and Feedback. Learners will view a 15 to 25 minute vignettes of a clinical interview during which they will choose from a menu of treatment and discussion options that mirror the choices typically faced in an actual clinical encounter.
Documenting the Effect of Education Programs on Provider Practice and Quality Patient Care
Upon completion of each educational activity, the impact of the intervention is measured against the identifiable need to improve health care quality. The MGH Academy offers outstanding content while forging a systematic and data-driven approach to studying the dynamics of the processes underlying provider education and generating validated outcome metrics.
The MGH Academy Membership is an increasingly potent vehicle for generating evaluation and outcomes measures (EOMs). We are exploring a number of new techniques to ensure accurate needs assessment of a provider's fund of knowledge and to identify crucial controversies or gaps that critically affect patient care. Our needs assessments and learning objectives are built around clinically actionable items (e.g., correct dose, when to utilize multimodal therapeutic interventions) that are chosen because they can be longitudinally and quantitatively measured. EOMs are validated against external standards (evidence-based studies, consensus guidelines and stratified provider bench mark cohorts) to provide the more than 21,000 MGH Academy members with meaningful aggregate (anonymous) performance feedback.
Building Toward the Future
The MGH Academy is privileged to form thousands of rewarding professional and personal relationships. As more and more practitioners seek the latest practice-based clinical information in easily-accessible formats, the MGH Academy continues to grow.
Our website is focused on enhanced interactivity and is your portal to a virtual postgraduate university where you will find unique opportunities to master a given topic area. Experience on our website is meant to be only the first step in a sequence of events that provide members with individualized learning activities. We invite you to join the MGH Academy. Access is completely free and provides you with the opportunity to find answers to critical questions as they arise — at the point of clinical contact in your day-to-day practice.
Become part of this unique professional community for continual educational development — complete your member registration today.
Together, we can strive to discover the best approaches to advance our field while preserving our place as clinicians that our patients trust.
Robert J. Birnbaum, MD, PhD
Executive Director of Postgraduate Medical Education
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
rjbirnbaum@partners.org
John A. Fromson, M.D.
Associate Director of Postgraduate Medical Education
Department of Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
jfromson@partners.org
Tristan Gorrindo, MD
Associate Director for Learning Innovation
Department of Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
tgorrindo@partners.org