Objectives

Our needs assessment, carried out with 278 ADHD-treating clinicians, highlighted several areas of clinical practice that were harbouring practice gaps such as the level of interaction between physicians and other members of the interdisciplinary care network, diagnostic confidence with respect to the identification of comorbidities,  the use of psychosocial interventions and the management of compliance.

Our approach

At our inaugural live Continuing Medical Education (CME) event, ‘Evolution in ADHD’, we brought about enduring clinical practice improvements in the space of just 90 minutes. In this mould-breaking symposium, we turned our 200-strong audience into groups of parents, teachers, psychiatrists and patients. Equipped with character-specific information and voting handsets, our learners took part in a mass interactive role play designed to recreate the impact of poor multidisciplinary communication on patient outcomes right from early childhood all the way to maturity.

During the symposium, they were asked to vote on a series of challenging treatment decisions based purely on the information that they had been given for their role. Not only did their answers serve to highlight the different decisions taken by each role, but, importantly, helped to solidify the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to ADHD treatment.

Outcome

  • 65% of attendees provided psychoeducation at diagnosis
  • 55% set and modified treatment goals and changed treatment where necessary
  • 40% increased consultations with teachers and other healthcare professionals
  • 60% reviewed diagnoses and checked for comorbidities when the patient did not respond to treatment or experienced side effects

Six months on, 80% had changed their practice and the rest were committed to doing so. Over a third spoke to other healthcare professionals more and two-thirds provided more psychoeducation from diagnosis and when initiating new medication. We also saw large increases in the management of comorbidities, and an improvement in goal-setting and treatment modification when goals were not met.

For almost two-thirds of our respondents, switching medication was no longer the first port of call when response was low; screening for other disorders had become an important first step in managing non-response. Not bad for a 90-minute learning encounter.