Collaborative Partnerships for the Tourette Syndrome Community
NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome collaborates with Overlook Medical Center doctors to forge findings about landmark program developed for the TS community in 2010
SOMERVILLE, N.J. – The NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) is proud to announce that “A Patient-Led Educational Program on Tourette Syndrome: Impact and Implications for Patient-Centered Medical Education,” a paper on which it collaborated, has been published in Volume 26, Issue 1 of “Teaching and Learning in Medicine: An International Journal.”
The authors of the paper are NJCTS intern Kirsten L. Graham, M.S.Ed., Stuart Green, DMH, LCSW, associate director of the Overlook Family Medicine Residency Program and the behavioral sciences director at Overlook Medical Center in Summit; Dr. Roger Kurlan, Director of the Movement Disorders Program at Overlook Medical Center’s Atlantic Neuroscience Institute in Summit; and NJCTS intern Jamye Shelton Pelosi.
The purpose of the paper was to demonstrate how graduate medical education about Tourette Syndrome does not typically focus on understanding the perspectives and perceptions of individuals with the condition through focusing on the Patient-Centered Medical Education (PCME) model, which Stuart Green helped NJCTS develop in 2010.
“Collaborating with Overlook Medical Center to bring Patient-Centered Medical Education on Tourette Syndrome to medical residents across New Jersey is very important,” Graham says. “And it’s even more exciting that through this publication we are now able to disseminate the effectiveness of this program to medical educators on an international scale. It’s my hope that this paper will help bolster similar patient educator programs for TS and other medical conditions.”
PCME is a unique education program that provides doctors and physicians in training an opportunity to hear directly from adolescents/young adults with Tourette Syndrome and their families. It fosters an understanding of the perspectives, stresses and needs of families living with TS and associated disorders such as OCD, ADHD and anxiety.
The PCME model was proven successful by studying 79 medical residents and students who attended NJCTS patient-led presentations at five sites across New Jersey. The results concluded that providing patient-led educational presentations to medical residents can increase physician empathy, increase knowledge of Tourette Syndrome and support the advancement of patient-centered medical education.
“The individuals with Tourette Syndrome were able to convey very well how the condition affects them personally, which greatly impacted the understanding of medical trainees,” Dr. Kurlan explains.
Since 2010, PCME presentations have taken place at 18 New Jersey hospitals and at the Yale University Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn.
“Patient-Centered Medical Education is a program the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome developed to help educate health-care professionals about Tourette Syndrome so that the 1 in 100 children and families affected by this often devastating neurological disorder can receive faster diagnoses and more effective treatment,” NJCTS Executive Director Faith W. Rice says. “There is no better way to communicate what children and families need from their physicians than to have the children and families do it themselves.”
For more information about the Patient-Centered Medical Education program, or to schedule it at your location, please call 908-575-7350 or visit www.njcts.org.
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NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders, Inc. Collaborative partnerships for the TS community.