AT AES 2016
HOUSTON (FRONTLINE MEDICAL NEWS) – Fellowship training in clinical neurophysiology delivered high rates of satisfaction, but recommended areas for improvements include more focus on training in sleep, brain mapping, and evoked potentials, results from a survey of current trainees found.
“There has been no systematic evaluation of neurophysiology fellowships,” Zulfi Haneef, MD , said in an interview in advance of the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society. “In fact, there are some studies on neurology residency, but not on any of the neurology fellowships. This study opens a window into what the situation is after residency: what makes the residents decide on a fellowship, and how they feel they have done with the choice of fellowship.”
In late 2015, Dr. Haneef, a neurologist at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and his associates sent a 17-item, Internet-based survey to current neurophysiology fellows in the United States, with the intent to collect data regarding demographics, reasons for choosing fellowship, adequacy of training, and future career plans. Of the 49 trainees who responded, 84% had graduated from a U.S. medical school. While the primary motivator for choosing the fellowship was a personal interest in clinical neurophysiology (92%), the most common secondary and tertiary motivators were reimbursement (47%) and academic prestige (49%), respectively. Program choice was most often guided by location and clinical strength of the program (cited by 52% and 42% of respondents, respectively). “These are factors which can be highlighted by various programs to improve recruiting top candidates,” Dr. Haneef said.
Overall, 87% of respondents expressed satisfaction with their current program and rated it as 4 or a 5 on a 1-5 Likert scale. “It seems that choosing a program based on the location may not have been the best thing to do,” he said. “Satisfaction scores (on a 1-5 scale for the training) were lower among those who chose a program based on location.” Less time spent in the epilepsy monitoring unit and EEG monitoring was also associated with higher satisfaction scores. “Rather than a lack of interest in epilepsy monitoring and EEG, this may reflect overemphasis on these at the expense of other areas, as these were also the areas that appeared to be most stressed during training,” Dr. Haneef said. The researchers observed no differences between male and female respondents in their answers to the various survey questions.
Based on the survey results, better clinical neurophysiology training in some areas were deemed necessary by the responding fellows, including sleep, brain mapping, and evoked potentials. Dr. Haneef acknowledged certain limitations of the study, including the fact that it was voluntary. “As such there could be some self-selection of fellows who have stronger viewpoints that pushed them to respond to a survey,” he said. He reported having no financial disclosures related to the study.
