The DETAILS BLOG
Capturing Stories from the Field: Reflections, Challenges, & Best Practices
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An interview with Terryn Naumann BSc(Pharm), PharmD the Director of Academic Detailing and Optimal Use at the British Columbia Ministry of Health by Winnie Ho, NaRCAD Program Coordinator. Overview: Terryn previously spoke about her experiences on a virtual detailing panel at the NaRCAD2019 conference. You can watch the video recording here.  NaRCAD: Terryn, thank you so much for speaking with us today about your experiences with detailing in the province of British Columbia. The BC Provincial Academic Detailing (PAD) Service certainly has a lot of ground to cover. Tell us about the program goals and geography. Terryn: For reference, British Columbia is geographically larger than Texas, but the population of British Columbia is only about 5 million people. We provide our detailing services to family practice physicians, nurse practitioners, and a few other healthcare professionals. Our detailers each do more than 175 visits per year, and collectively, they see about 2000 providers per topic, which includes about a third or so, of all the family physicians in BC. We have 12 detailers in total, half of whom are working in less densely populated areas. For example, the northern end of the province is mostly small communities with only 3-4 providers in each town. One year, one of the detailers drove over 17,000 km (10,563mi) for her visits alone!  NaRCAD: That’s an incredible amount of work that your detailers have been up to! And you yourself have been active in AD for a long time. What was your experience then like? Terryn: I started in 1993 with the program that would one day expand to become the PAD service, and I detailed for about 7 years. I came back to academic detailing in 2008 as the coordinator of the provincial program. When I started in 1993, I had just graduated with my PharmD. I had read about AD and was excited to try something new. You have to realize, at the time, technology wasn’t that advanced... I didn’t even have an e-mail address when I first started. You couldn’t just send people a note and say “When would you like to meet?” It wasn’t simple to access people. NaRCAD: How would you describe how AD has changed since you started?  Terryn: When I started, I was the first academic detailer in Canada. There were about 70 physicians that I would go out to visit for each of the topics I put together after having the content reviewed by a local physician specialist from within our own community. One of the things that has changed is the breadth of resources and the growth of the AD community. There are so many more people involved, content is more thoroughly researched, and the literature is more readily accessible through technology. NaRCAD: Technology has certainly changed the way the world works, and it’s something that detailing programs are turning to more and more to tackle the challenges you’ve mentioned, such as trying to serve a large and scattered population with a limited team. We’ve seen the increased use of tele-communications to do detailing. What has your experience been with virtual detailing, also commonly called ‘e-detailing’?  Terryn: One of the things we value about AD is that truly interactive, face-to-face encounter and that ability to individualize sessions to the provider’s learning needs. Virtual detailing uses a different methodology altogether. I think there are advantages to virtual detailing, but sometimes I think that it’s not as simple as moving AD to a web platform. I worry about the personal elements you can lose, even when using a web platform where you can see each other. My detailers often end up making slides of the original materials, which sometimes turns the session into more of a presentation. NaRCAD: Can you elaborate further on the nuances you’ve seen with this new approach? Terryn: We started with something we called Technology-Enabled AD (TEAD) which was a limited study done to compare the efficacy of TEAD versus a traditional face-to-face visit. They found that there was an effective knowledge exchange during both types of sessions, but the time it took for TEAD was far shorter. However, when we added TEAD as an optional feature for our providers, we ran into multiple challenges, such as detailers and providers not being familiar enough with the technology. The large majority of our providers choose to meet in person when they have that option.  That said, virtual detailing has been useful considering BC’s terrain and rough winters. Some regions have winter 8 months of the year and travel is limited for safety reasons. We have used virtual detailing, but find that we need detailers that are tech-savvy and can guide providers through accessing the platform easily. The key is maintaining the interactivity component and having the session not become a presentation. If we can embrace virtual detailing as its own, unique skillset, we may be able to take advantage of all of its benefits. I think that we’re also at a changing point in technology – the next generation of providers (and detailers) will have grown up with and be more comfortable using technology. NaRCAD: There will be a lot of growth in detailing as we are able to incorporate more options into how we reach providers, with the emphasis being on building a strong relationship. Terryn: The goal of AD has always been to have a clinician who values a discussion about the evidence, and then is able to incorporate the evidence into their own practice and drug therapy decision making. E-detailing is just another modality for doing that. We found that virtual detailing is most effective after establishing a prior relationship with the provider during a face-to-face visit. We received fantastic feedback from one provider who felt the virtual detailing session that he participated in from the comfort and privacy of his home allowed him to ask questions he might otherwise have avoided asking in a group setting. If we can use technology to build relationships like that, then ultimately isn’t that what we want? I would say that it is.  Biography.
Terryn Naumann is the Director of Academic Detailing and Optimal Use at British Columbia’s Ministry of Health’s Pharmaceutical Services Division. She earned her pharmacy degrees from the University of British Columbia and completed a hospital pharmacy residency at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. Terryn began her career in academic detailing in 1993 when she worked at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver as the clinical pharmacist for the Community Drug Utilization Program – the first academic detailing program in Canada. Since 2008, Terryn has led BC’s Provincial Academic Detailing (PAD) Service, a team of 12 academic detailing pharmacists who conduct over 2000 academic detailing/small group learning sessions each year. She is a member of the Canadian Academic Detailing Collaboration, having served as chairperson and secretary. She has also been a facilitator at several of the Centre for Effective Practice’s Basic Academic Detailing workshops.  An Interview with Johnathan Goree, MD Director of Chronic Pain and Opioid Stewardship University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences NaRCAD Training Alumnus by Kristina Stefanini, Program Coordinator at NaRCAD NaRCAD: Thanks for talking with me today! Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in pain management? Johnathan Goree: I’m from Arkansas originally. After completing college at Washington University in St. Louis, medical school and residency at Cornell, and a pain medicine fellowship at Emory, I was recruited to start the chronic pain division at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences – 2 miles away from where I went to high school. I’m proud to work in Arkansas; Arkansas is such a poor and rural state, so we don’t often have the resources that other states have.  I went into anesthesiology because I wanted to be the best prepared doctor for an emergency, but I moved into pain medicine because I missed the 1-on-1 patient contact and longitudinal patient care. Here are some other things that lead me into pain medicine. After getting my wisdom teeth removed, I was given too much fentanyl during the procedure resulting in being given Narcan to wake up. That was the first time in my life I experienced 10/10 pain. It allowed me to understand how pain can completely dominate someone’s consciousness. I am also passionate about pain management in minority communities. Many in those communities feel that their pain is undertreated, and evidence backs that up. NaRCAD: As a physician, what are some of the barriers that detailers may have talking to clinicians about pain management? How can these be navigated? Johnathan Goree: Every physician will say the number one barrier is time. While most physicians are excited to learn about anything that will improve patient care, unfortunately, physicians are usually not in control of their schedule.
NaRCAD: How can clinicians act as champions in an academic detailing campaign? Johnathan Goree: One way physicians can help is with the crafting of educational materials. Physicians know how physicians think and can help by crafting a message that may better catch attention. Another is by dedicating time to answer follow-up questions from detailers and other clinicians. In my field of chronic pain management, detailers that don't have a clinical background may not know how to answer questions on specific off-label situations or treatment of specific pains. A follow-up visit or call with a clinician can help with that. NaRCAD: Anything else you’d like to add for our readers? Johnathan Goree: More praise for you guys – your course is excellent! Really understanding the science and method behind academic detailing made me excited to be a part of it. I hope more physicians engage both as detailers and as champions. I think it’s really important. Biography.
Johnathan Goree, MD, Director of Chronic Pain and Opioid Stewardship University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Board certified in anesthesiology and pain medicine, Dr. Johnathan Goree received his Bachelor of Arts in biology from Washington University in St. Louis. He then moved to New York City where he completed both his medical degree and a residency in anesthesiology at the Weill College of Medicine at Cornell University. Following his time in Manhattan, he completed a fellowship in chronic pain medicine at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2014, Dr. Goree returned home to Little Rock, Arkansas to join the faculty at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences where he serves as the Director of the Chronic Pain Division and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology. He primarily focuses on the treatment of chronic pain conditions using opiate sparing, minimally invasive techniques. His specific research interests include complex regional pain syndrome, neuromodulation, and the effects of opioid education initiatives on patient outcomes. Director's Letter: Summer 2017 | Mike Fischer, MD, MS, NaRCAD Director Academic detailing is naturally versatile, growing from the initial studies focused on prescribing decisions to include interventions to improve childhood screening, assessment of cardiovascular risk, smoking cessation treatment, and many other important clinical topics.  Whenever medical care and patient outcomes can be improved by outreach education to frontline clinicians, there’s an opportunity for AD to make a crucial difference. We’ve seen our partner organizations use AD in novel and exciting ways, making adaptations to fit their specific interventions and to combat diverse challenges. Healthcare is in a period of ongoing, rapid change—and continued innovation in clinical outreach education is critical in improving the quality of patient care. But for new ideas to have an impact, they need to be evaluated and communicated to the larger community. Tell us more about what you’re working on—we’ll connect you with others addressing the same clinical topic, or working with a similar geography or population, and we’ll share your experiences and results via our best practices blog, website, newsletter, and social media platform. Along with trainings and networking opportunities, NaRCAD provides targeted consultation and technical assistance to improve your successes in the field. We also participate in collaborations with programs as part of multifactorial interventions and research studies.
If so, drop us an e-mail, give us a call, or write a note in the comments section below--we’ll be in touch to figure out next steps, whether that involves submitting a proposal together, figuring out a customized training, or connecting you with experts that can support your project.  Whether you’re looking to strengthen your team, meet thought leaders in the field, or tell us more about your work in person, we hope you’ll join us at our Fall Training in September, and our annual International Conference on AD this November--registration is open for both, and we look forward to seeing you soon! -Mike Biography. Michael Fischer, MD, MS, NaRCAD Director
Dr. Fischer is a general internist, pharmacoepidemiologist, and health services researcher. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and a clinically active primary care physician and educator at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. With extensive experience in designing and evaluating interventions to improve medication use, he has published numerous studies demonstrating potential gains from improved prescribing. Read more. |
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