Abstracts

Rationale: APP utilization has been increasing in the historically physician-driven ambulatory setting. Unfortunately, educational needs of APPs have not been well researched. This includes APPs working in ambulatory neurology practices. Epilepsy patients frequently present with a wide variety of neurological problems beyond their seizures. The epilepsy APP, while trained in epilepsy care, may not have appropriate education in other neurological subspecialties, and may be ill-equipped to deal with all of the patient’s complaints. This is commonly encountered in other neurological subspecialities as well. We designed and implemented an ongoing series to address this education gap.

Methods: Monthly hour-long cross-subspecialty virtual presentations were held discussing 11 distinct areas of neurology over a year's time. Demographic information was collected (i.e., clinical role, years of experience, and current subspecialty). Pre-and post-series surveys were collected to analyze provider’s competence in managing different neurological conditions. The survey questions were formatted in a five point Likert scale.

Results: So far, nine of eleven sessions have been completed with an average of 14 participants for each session. This includes a mix of nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Participants experience in neuroscience ranges from 0-16 years, and participants represent seven inpatient and outpatient neurology subspecialties. Data collection and analysis is ongoing currently. Initial analysis of the pre-series data show that APPs are very confident in managing patients within their own subspecialty, but not confident in managing complaints from other specialties. Informal feedback thus far has been overwhelmingly positive. Post-series surveys will be collected and analyzed once the series is over.

Conclusions: With the increased utilization of APPs in subspecialty neurology ambulatory practice, APPs are seeing patients with a wide variety of complaints that may not fall under their primary subspecialty. Unfortunately, APPs often lack formal training to address these issues. The interprofessional neurology APP education series that we designed could address this knowledge gap. We anticipate that this series will promote competence across multiple neurological sub-specialties. If the data supports this finding, more research should be completed on the educational benefits of providing sub-specialized lectures and APP-led presentations.

Funding: None