Institutionalizing Change for EEG Education in Residency Programs: Fabio Nascimento, MD

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The clinical fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital gives his call to action on how what needs to change to improve EEG education among residency programs.

"How do we make this change? Well, groups have to come together and gain an understanding that there need to be newer ways of teaching, and that we need to take advantage of the technology. There are online courses, assessments, and virtual videos that can all be used.”

Recently published findings from Fabio Nascimento, MD and Jay Gavvala, MD, MSCI, identified inconsistencies across electroencephalogram (EEG) neurology residency education tactics. Nascimento, an EEG/epilepsy clinical fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, claims the issues within the education system are well known by residents themselves. In total, the average number of EEGs read during a typical EEG rotation varied from more than 40, in about one-third of programs, to 0–10, in about 14% of programs.

In addition to main findings, the 2 also provided possible solutions to the most commonly reported barriers to EEG education. Their suggestions for optimizing teaching and learning included increase in supervision, reading time with faculty, and an up-tick in the responsibility and accountability to read EEGs during rotation, among others.

To better understand how these inconsistencies can be resolved, we turned to Nascimento for his insight. In an interview with NeurologyLive, he provided his thoughts on where the change comes from, and why culture needs to be the highest priority to ensure better results.