Thank you very much to Drs. Vincent, Good, and El-Mallakh for their guest editorial on interventional psychiatry (“Interventional psychiatry: What are the next steps?” Current Psychiatry, July 2023, p. 7-9, doi:10.12788/cp.0378). Your addressing the “gap in training” regarding “evidence the growth of interventional psychiatry has exceeded the capacity of the current training infrastructure to provide trainees with adequate exposure to these procedures” is right on the mark, as is the observation that the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Psychiatry Milestones “do not indicate how competency in these therapies can be achieved.”
The Clinical Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Society (CTMSS) is well aware of these issues and is actively addressing them:
1. We have increased the number of PULSES courses—designed to serve as intensive, introductory courses on TMS—we provide, and increased the number of members on our PULSES team to address this. We have also increased the number of PULSES scholarships for psychiatry residents that cover the costs of the conference and materials.
2. We created a standing Resident Subcommittee of our Education Committee that is focused on psychiatry resident training. We realize not all psychiatric residency programs have active TMS programs or attendings who are trained in TMS. Last year we presented lectures aimed at introducing TMS to PGY-1 and PGY-2 psychiatry residents. These were recorded and are available for free on the CTMSS website (www.clinicaltmssociety.org).
3. The Resident Subcommittee presented the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training with a curriculum submission that was accepted and will be available to all psychiatric residents across the country free of charge. (Current Psychiatry Associate Editor Phillip G. Janicak, MD was very helpful to our subcommittee with this project.)
4. The topic of resident/fellow training in all forms of neuromodulation was discussed during our monthly Grand Rounds webinar and at our annual meeting.
5. The issue of having a broader base of knowledge and training in neuromodulation was a topic at a recent Education Committee meeting, and this year we are adding lectures on electroconvulsive therapy and esketamine to our Grand Rounds webinars. Many CTMSS members are trained and knowledgeable in multiple neuromodulation modalities.
Continue to: 6. Many CTMSS members...