Using Patient-Centered Clinical Neuroscience to Deliver the Diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND): Results..., 2020, Medina et al

[Andy]

Full title: Using Patient-Centered Clinical Neuroscience to Deliver the Diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND): Results from an Innovative Educational Workshop

Objectives
Psychiatry training is lacking examples of neuroscience education that translates neuroscience literature into accessible clinically oriented concepts. The authors created a teaching activity using patient-centered neuroscience education that focused on delivering the diagnosis of functional neurological disorder (FND). This study aimed to (i) develop a workshop modeling a clinician-patient interaction, (ii) provide a modern neuroscience perspective of FND, and (iii) evaluate the change in clinicians’ perceptions of FND.

Methods
A total of six workshops (each 1 h long and consisting of a video, PowerPoint slides, and pre and post questionnaires) were conducted. Paired t tests were used to measure the change.

Results
Forty-seven clinicians participated. After completing the workshop, nearly all endorsed that functional symptoms are “real” (95%) and that treatment is helpful (100%). Participants also reported a greater comfort level with discussing FND diagnosis (46% vs 85%, p < 0.001), an overall increase in understanding the disorder (33% vs 82%, p < 0.001), assessing need for tests (33% vs 66%, p < 0.001), understanding treatment options (26% vs 89%, p < 0.001), and recognition that treatment can help control these symptoms (81% vs 100%, p < 0.01). In addition, learners were more likely to report that patients with FND are truthful (75% vs 95%, p < 0.001) and less likely to be manipulative (48% vs 80%, p < 0.001).

Conclusions
A brief, educational intervention using neuroscience-based content was found to significantly improve clinicians’ perception and confidence when delivering the diagnosis of FND.

Paywall, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40596-020-01324-8
Sci hub, https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s40596-020-01324-8

 

[Mithriel]

So tell doctors FND is a real disease and that treatments work and they will think that is a good thing. I wonder how much of the workshop was taken up with critically examining the evidence and explaining how to rule out neurological diseases with obscure presentations such as myotonic dystrophy where cataracts, frontal balding and trouble opening your eyes after a bright light is shone on them are the critical criteria.

 

[rvallee]

A "patient-centered" copy-paste study, of which there are dozens of identical iterations, that does not include any patients and aims to teach clinicians to better lie to their patients is impressive peak FND. It's very "patient-centered" to lie to patients, folks. When a diagnosis is correct you do not have to sell it to patients, the very idea is completely absurd. This looks very much like the kind of garbage teaching material Gerada featured in decades ago, showing no one is learning from experience in this damned ideology, that even years of use in practice mean nothing, will not even be taken into account while selling the hypothetical benefits of this if it had any basis in reality.

Really odd that they ask about patients being manipulative when the very idea of "those patients" being manipulative comes out of the BPS/MUS/FND ideology. As usual, they point to their own failure as evidence that they are succeeding. Somehow. It's also really odd that they ask opinions about basic facts. Why ask about clinicians' opinions about treatment when there are no effective treatments? This is not supposed to be subject to opinion, it is literal disinformation, which they then rate by counting how well the disinformation has been accepted, the very same process of medical gaslighting they use with patients.

This whole thing is basically a cult.