PATIENT-AS-TEACHER PROJECT
There is a shortage of metabolic physicians practicing in North America and not enough young doctors training in this subspecialty. Meanwhile, the field is advancing in many successful ways. Newborn screening for metabolic disease continues to expand, identifying more patients in need of attention and follow-up. New effective treatments are becoming available. Many patients are living longer and remain in better health; they need long-term metabolic care.
The Metabolism Service at Tufts Medical Center has launched the Metabolism Outreach Service (MOS), the largest metabolic educational outreach program ever created, to several teaching hospitals in the northeastern U.S. It consists of lectures and workshops that highlight a metabolic approach to a wide range of symptoms, opportunities for patients and families to address medical audiences, and scheduled occasions to review patient cases with physicians when metabolic disease should be considered.
Metabolic education of physicians must be a priority so that they can participate more in the diagnosis and management of metabolic patients. Medical students need to hear about and see patients with metabolic disease. We need to get them interested so they might consider the area of genetic metabolic disease as a career choice.
An essential component of the Metabolic Outreach Service is the Patient-As-Teacher Project, and this is where you can play a part in one of two ways (or both!):
1. Consider speaking to medical audiences i.e., medical students at a medical school, or residents and attending physicians at a teaching hospital. Patients and parents can teach in a very compelling way that makes for a powerful message. Medical audiences also appreciate a patient's perspective on his/her journey through the health care system.
2. Allow the Metabolic Outreach Service to review you/your child's medical record and use it as a teaching case. Teaching is much more effective when it includes a real case; each case usually has many teaching points to offer. Having many cases available means the cases can be changed periodically in order to challenge those attending the metabolic workshops.
If you are interested in participating in the Patient-As-Teacher Project, please review the attached forms and mail them in or fax them back to our office.
If you have any questions, please call (617) 636-5443.
There is so much work to be done in the area of genetic metabolic disease. Thanks for helping in this important effort.
This project is supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, administered through the New England Genetics Collaborative, HRSA Grant Number 2 U22MC03959-04-00.