Update on WPA Education Programs, 2009
Authors: ALLAN TASMAN
Journal: World Psychiatry (2009)

It is incumbent upon those involved in training the next generation of psychiatrists and other physicians to ensure that trainees and practitioners are exposed to the widest possible range of medical and psychiatric knowledge and clinical settings, so that they can develop appropriate clinical skills based on cutting edge knowledge. It is within this context that the WPA has developed an array of educational programming geared toward ensuring that psychiatrists, other physicians, and the general public, no matter where in the world they live or train, will have the advantage of the latest understanding of psychiatric illness etiologies, diagnosis, and treatment. A variety of educational materials are available on the WPA website (www.wpanet.org). A recent education project is the WPA/International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders program on personality disorders 1,2. E. Simonsen and colleagues have produced a work that is comprehensive, but organized in a way that makes access to the material easy for individuals at any stage of their professional careers. Soon after the publication of this issue of World Psychiatry, readers will find that a new and completely revised edition of the educational program on depressive disorders 3 is available on the WPA website. An important aim of the revision is to make the new materials useful in the primary care setting. Thus, an important part of the overall project will include collaboration with other organizations to develop material for use in primary care. A newly approved Education Committee statement, entitled “Recommended roles for the psychiatrist in first episode psychosis”, is available on the WPA website under “Educational Resources”. This document was prepared to provide psychiatrists with guidance about the most recent developments regarding knowledge of psychosis onset, and the implications of these findings for early detection and intervention. Another important component of the WPA Action Plan 2008–2011 is a complete revision of the WPA curricular recommendations for medical student and resident education 4. The goal of this project is to ensure that the material is useful for those teaching in a wide range of programs around the world, with extremely variable resources. In addition, the project will include sections on advances in various educational approaches, such as competency based education and evaluation, which were not covered in the previous works because these approaches did not exist at the time. Another important component of future educational programs will be to develop ways to take advantage of existing and future technologies, such as interactive computer based education and telemedicine based educational programming. As a starting point to assess the use of technology in WPA education initiatives, we plan to develop a series of online continuing medical education (CME) programs based on lectures presented at WPA World and International Congresses. We also intend to develop online, interactive continuing medical education (CME) review questions, so that psychiatrists will have the opportunity to gain CME credits. Another example of plans to use technology in education is an ongoing project of the WPA Education Committee to develop a Wikipedia based medical student textbook of psychiatry. Wikipedia is an online, free encyclopedia which has now expanded its scope to include books and textbooks. While this program has not yet received official WPA endorsement, because it is not yet complete and submitted for approval, interested individuals can visit the Wikipedia website for the present draft version, which is http:en.wikibooks.orgwikiTextbookofPsychiatry. To address the ongoing concern about stigma regarding mental illnesses and psychiatrists, we have initiated the development of a new project on public education. The eventual product will be a separate section of the WPA website with materials available in the major WPA languages and with links to public education materials from WPA Member Societies, all in the languages of the home country. In addition, it is envisioned that these links will also contain WPA developed public education materials in the native language of the local country. We have an extensive and ambitious agenda for the development of our educational programs over the coming years. This is essential for the field, as the pace of change within psychiatry is rapid and dramatic. Anyone interested in assisting with any aspect of our projects is encouraged to contact me, Allan Tasman, WPA Secretary of Education, at allan.tasman@louisville.edu. These are exciting times for the future of psychiatric education, and collaboration with as many of you as possible will make our progress even more impressive.