More individuals complain about headaches than any other condition. Headaches are disorders without a biological marker; the diagnosis is based on history and symptoms. Migraine is the third most prevalent disorder affecting 15% of Americans. As the most stigmatized neurological disease, society and media view it as just a bad headache, instead of a debilitating and disabling disease. Therefore, migraine is often underdiagnosed and undertreated. Similarly, cluster headache, aka suicide headache, remains widely underdiagnosed due to insufficient awareness among physicians frequently causing delayed diagnosis. 71% of headache patients consult their primary care providers (PCP) for headache management, which remains suboptimal with inaccurate diagnoses, inadequate treatment, barbiturate and opioid overuse, and an average four-year gap between diagnosis and initiation of preventive medications. Clinical education on headache disorders in medical schools and advanced providers programs is insufficient in standardization, hours in didactic, residency, and clinical settings to address the very high prevalence of headaches. Therefore, prescribing patterns and patient outcomes vary greatly between providers.
The “Engage Me – All About the Patient” series is an innovative, virtual interprofessional education (IPE) core curriculum for collaborative student learning from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) Medical, Physician Assistant, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Biomedical Sciences, Public and Population Health education programs. It aims to educate about challenging health topics including primary headache disorders; economic implications of the public health burden of diseases; tools to reduce diagnostic errors and improve health outcomes. “Engage Me” also allows students to hear patients’ and caregivers’ medical and personal experiences becoming a platform for community engagement and awareness. The session fosters small IPE student teams to apply their roles to clinical-decision and community engagement skills during case studies. A large debrief allows for student team reflection and discussion. Thus, “Engage Me” integrates all four IPEC core competencies to improve outcomes for a particular health condition.
Speakers from family medicine, neurology, nursing, research, medical sociology, social work, national patient advocacy organizations (Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy, National Headache Foundation, Clusterbusters, Association of Migraine Disorders, and Coalition for Headache and Migraine Patients) and headache patients provide information on patient resources, support groups, and advocacy opportunities. Post-assessments consistently show an average of 65.2% of students report a history of headaches or know people with a headache disease. Also, 98.4% of students report being either very satisfied (65.63 %) or satisfied (32.81%) with this activity and find it applicable to their careers.
