PAVING THE WAY FOR PRECISION MEDICINE IN PSYCHIATRY – DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A UNIFIED RARE GENETICS CURRICULUM

Background This is an exciting time in psychiatry. For the last few years, we have been witnessing an accelerated pace of genetic discoveries that are redefining our understanding of mental health disorders spanning from autism to schizophrenia. Insights have come from common and rare genetics alike, fueled by techniques that have a higher resolution and a lower cost. However, most psychiatrists were trained in an era that preceded this cutting-edge work, and psychiatry residency and fellowship programs have not yet integrated this new information into their curricula. Current challenges include determining unified content areas that should be known by psychiatrists, as well as implementing the delivery and teaching of these concepts using principles of adult learning. Here, we describe joint efforts to address this practice gap, using rare genetics as a vehicle. Methods Multiple stakeholders have gotten together to address this issue. The Education Taskforce of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG) was formed to identify and standardize key content areas that should be covered in psychiatry training programs across the globe, while the National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative (NNCI) has focused on implementing the delivery of this content. As a joint effort, we have developed an interactive case conference tailored towards teaching principles and applications of rare genetics in psychiatry, using autism as an example to provide clinical correlation and applicability of this knowledge. We designed the module using the NNCI standards, and included supporting media and guidance for facilitators to allow for this material to be free-standing and independent from local expertise for its delivery. We administered this exercise to 300 psychiatry residents, fellows, and psychiatry program directors at diverse settings, and obtained pre and post knowledge assessments, as well as qualitative data on impressions and utility of the module. Results Our preliminary results showed an overall low genetic literacy among all surveyed groups in the pre-assessments, followed by a high retention of content after the exercise, with detailed analyses underway. We also obtained positive qualitative feedback, which included an increased appreciation for the clinical relevance of this knowledge and satisfaction with the method of delivery. Discussion Our results were in agreement with our hypothesis of low genetic literacy across psychiatry, which justifies the need for increased efforts to standardize and deliver this knowledge. We showed that the module was well received and feasibly applied with local resources within diverse settings, and led to increased genetics knowledge in participants. This highlights the importance of blending key content with sound pedagogical methods and maintaining the clinical grounding of exercises, and underscores the relevance of modest and attainable learning objectives. The approach used here, for which collaborations between the ISPG Education Taskforce and the NNCI were key, could easily be adapted and broadly generalized for other core competencies in genetics.