Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jul 31, 2022
Date Accepted: Oct 12, 2023
Digital Psychiatry: A Pilot Study on the Implementation of a Residency Curriculum
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Digital psychiatry, broadly defined as the application of health technologies to the assessment, support, prevention, and treatment of mental health illnesses, is a growing field. There is increased interest in the role of these technologies in clinical encounters. However, psychiatric trainees receive limited or no formal education on the topic.
Objective:
Objective:
We implemented and evaluated a dedicated digital psychiatry pilot curriculum for a U.S.-based psychiatry residency training program to educate trainees in the assessment and prescribing of digital interventions.
Methods:
Methods:
Through pre- and post-surveys, we measured identified competencies, including resident comfort with assessing, recommending, and prescribing mental health apps and digital therapeutics.
Results:
Results:
Approximately 16 residents completed the pre-curriculum survey, and 13 residents completed the post-curriculum survey. Nearly half of all residents had never recommended a digital psychiatry tool to patients. There was a statistically significant improvement in resident’s self-assessed comfort in conducting a structured assessment of a digital mental health application for its clinical utility (p=.026), assessing a patient’s digital health literacy (p=.01), formally recommending a digital health tool to your patients (p=.03), and prescribing a digital therapeutic to your patients (p=.03). Average resident comfort did not exceed “somewhat comfortable” on any of the above measures.
Conclusions:
Conclusion: This pilot study shows that the implementation of a digital psychiatry curriculum is feasible and that resident learners reported significantly increased comfort related to assessing patient digital health literacy, mental health apps, and digital therapeutics. The purpose of this manuscript is to present this curriculum, including its construction, content, and resident survey data to show feasibility of implementation of comparable didactics at other training programs.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.