Category: Education in Movement Disorders
Objective: To describe a hibrid modality with high-quality, well-structured and overseeded education program.
Background: In the field of movement disorders, specialized centers have emerged as crucial components in healthcare networks to enhance patients’ quality of life. Limited specialized centers on movement disorders exist in Latin America (LatAm).
Method: Center for Movement Disorders (CETRAM) is committed to constant innovation and excellence in healthcare, research, and education. CETRAM´s fellowship is one of Latin America’s first movement disorders programs, providing opportunities for Chilean and foreign neurologists and residents.
Results: After an enriching MDS center-to-center program experience, among CETRAM in Chile and Hospital de Clinicas de La Paz in Bolivia, beginning in 2022 with a two-year hybrid training program in movement disorders for neurologists in LatAm who lack local education opportunities and cannot attend the center for an extended period.
The curriculum is common to other programs but follows a hybrid-modality approach and includes residents’ seminars, weekly fellows’ conferences, case discussions, video challenges, journal clubs, research meetings, talk series, workshops, and a comprehensive clinical research course that increases fellows´ exposition to real-life case analysis, permitting live interactions with a co-fellow and mentor on-site. Also, the “off-site” fellows contribute with cases and experiences from their own center and local reality, mutually enriching our academic environment.
Conclusion: This program allows fellows enhance their abilities in conducting patient neurological assessments, improve their face-to-face approach to complex phenomenology, and acquire skills in procedures such as botulinum neurotoxin injections and deep brain stimulation programming, among other relevant competencies. Similar to other regions (i.e., North America), specialized training centers in LatAm offer dissimilar programs in terms of duration, administrative, and curricular differences4. These initiatives are an opportunity for mutual program strengthening.
References: 1. Zafar Z, Umair M, Faheem F, Bhatti D, Kalia JS. Medical Education 4.0: A Neurology Perspective. Cureus. 2022 Nov 19;14(11):e31668. doi: 10.7759/cureus.31668. PMID: 36545165; PMCID: PMC9762427.
2. Gerson Suarez-Cedeno, Alexander Pantelyat, Kelly A. Mills, Maitreyi Murthy, Jumana T. Alshaikh, Liana S. Rosenthal, Jee Bang, and Emile Moukheiber.Movement Disorders Virtual Fellowship Training in Times of Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Single-Center Experience.Telemedicine and e-Health.Oct 2021.1160-1165.http://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2020.0419).
3. Ratliff JB, Schaefer SM, Chitnis S, Cooney JW, Hess CW, Okubadejo N, Shalash A, Moro E, Sue C, Pandey S, Pal PK, Yang L. Viewpoint on Milestones for Fellowship Training in Movement Disorders. Mov Disord. 2022 Aug;37(8):1605-1609. doi: 10.1002/mds.29146. Epub 2022 Jul 11. PMID: 35816077; PMCID: PMC9543200.
4. Shih LC, Tarsy D, Okun MS. The current state and needs of north american movement disorders fellowship programs. Parkinsons Dis. 2013;2013:701426. doi: 10.1155/2013/701426. Epub 2013 Jul 25. PMID: 23984186; PMCID: PMC3745959.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
P. Salles, S. Peña, S. Silva, R. Jauregui, P. Saffie, P. Chaná-Cuevas. Initiating a Hybrid-Modality International Movement Disorders Fellowship: A Collaborative Effort Among Latin American Countries [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2024; 39 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/initiating-a-hybrid-modality-international-movement-disorders-fellowship-a-collaborative-effort-among-latin-american-countries/. Accessed May 13, 2025.« Back to 2024 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/initiating-a-hybrid-modality-international-movement-disorders-fellowship-a-collaborative-effort-among-latin-american-countries/