Neuroscience Education: Relevant, Stigma Reducing, and Fun to Learn (with Dr. Arbuckle, part 1 of 2)

In the first part of this interview, Dr. Melissa Arbuckle, Vice Chair for Education and Director of Resident Education in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York Psychiatric Institute, discusses neuroscience education for psychiatrists and the general public. She focuses on an innovative teaching curriculum that she co-developed called the National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative and the ways in which this curriculum makes neuroscience accessible, clinically relevant, and interesting.
She describes how understanding and teaching neuroscience can actually reduce stigma towards psychiatric illness (eg, addiction) for patients and decrease countertransference in psychiatrists. Additionally, she broadens the scope to discuss active teaching methods and adult learning principles in general. In rejecting lecture as a good teaching method, she also discusses what is so "scary" about teaching and "making" participants interact with each other.
TRANSCRIPT
David Carreon: Hey, everybody. This is David Carreon.
Jessi Gold: This is Jessi Gold.
David Carreon: And this is Psyched! Today we have Melissa Arbuckle with us, the Co-director of Resident Education in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She went to medical school at the University of Oklahoma and did a residency at Columbia. She served as a New York State Office of Mental Health policy scholar, 2009 to 2012, exploring the implementation of standardized patient assessments and measurement based care in the clinical practice of residents in training. She directs the quality improvement curriculum for the residency training program. Thank you for joining us.
Arbuckle: My pleasure.
Jessi Gold: You have a correction?
Arbuckle: Yeah.
Jessi Gold: What is it? It's okay.
Arbuckle: I'm now the Director of Residency Training and I'm the Vice Chair for Education, so, yeah, that hasn't been updated.
Jessi Gold: So a promotion?
Arbuckle: Yes, a promotion.
Jessi Gold: That's always good.
David Carreon: Congratulations.
Arbuckle: Thank you.
Jessi Gold: Congratulations.
David Carreon: So, well, thank you for joining us, and we've got a lot of ... I'm excited to talk to you about a number of things, but particularly the role of neuroscience in the psychiatry curriculum.
Arbuckle: Yeah.
David Carreon: What are your thoughts on why that's a good idea or not?
Arbuckle: Well, I think our knowledge, in terms of neuroscience and its relevance to the clinical practice of psychiatry, is increasing daily. The research in neuroscience and psychiatry is really exploding, and if that research is going to reach patients, it's going to require a clinician workforce that understands that work and can speak that kind of language.
David Carreon: So, say more about what are some of the ways that neuroscience can be integrated into a curriculum. I mean, what would that look like?
Arbuckle: In terms of medical training?
David Carreon: Yeah.
Arbuckle: I think that, as part of the National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative, we've been developing teaching resources, and that started in terms of thinking about how we teach neuroscience in the classroom, and particularly how we make sure that neuroscience for a medical audience feels clinically relevant, that it's taught in a way that capitalizes on adult learning, and that it's experience near to trainees and their role with patients.
When we first started, we were really thinking about how to do that in the classroom, but most of your training is in clinical settings, so more recently we've moved towards developing short videos, in terms of teaching core neuroscience topics, that can be used in clinical settings with both the teacher and the trainee together.
I think we have this model for education where the teacher is supposed to be the expert, teaching something to a student, and for neuroscience, the field is exploding and most clinicians are not neuroscience experts and feel uncomfortable teaching. So we've developed really short educational videos that teachers or faculty and trainees can watch together and learn together. So it's really a different way of teaching.
David Carreon: Yeah, no, I think that's definitely ... The old model, or at least the traditional model of expert trainee is ... that kind of turns it on its head. I mean, are these videos that are available online or what's-
Arbuckle: Yes.
David Carreon: What is the project?
Arbuckle: Yes. In 2014, I joined with Mike Travis and David Ross to develop the National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative, and in that project we put all of these open resource videos, papers online. Anyone can log in, create a login to access the materials, and the idea was to really disseminate neuroscience education in a way that was acce...