I recently attended the annual meeting of the American Pain Society, in Pittsburgh, PA. Aside from eating at “Primanti Bros,” where they put the fries and coleslaw inside each and every delicious sandwich, I also learned a few things about chronic pain.
June is National PTSD Awareness month. While increasing education regarding PTSD is a year-round effort, this month finds many organizations, including the Center for Deployment Psychology, making an increased effort to spotlight PTSD and some of the resources available to aid those suffering from it. There has been significant advancement in raising awareness, treating PTSD, and reducing the stigma associated with it, but there is still no shortage of work to be done.
Drs. Kevin Holloway and Jenna Ermold discuss the history, strengths, and philosophy behind the Center for Deployment Psychology's use of virtual training in Second Life in this enlightening and entertaining video interview.
One key to both learning a new approach to treatment and maintaining our existing skills involves consultation, particularly for EBPs. Don’t just take my word for it, research shows that consultation after a training workshop not only boosts providers’ subjective self-efficacy and intent to use the treatment (Ruzek et al, 2016), but also improves objective fidelity ratings as well (Webster-Stratton et al, 2014).
In today's Staff Perspective, Carin Lefkowitz and Andy Santanello discuss a recent article [Szafranski, D. D., Smith, B. N., Gros, D. F., & Resick, P. A. (2017). High rates of PTSD treatment dropout: A possible red herring?