Present on the line were Gail Rose, Katie McQueen, Marianne Guschwan, Andrea DiMartini, Marian Fireman, Joe Sakai, Susan Tapert, Chris Delos Reyes, Sarah Book, and Marc Schuckit.

The conference call began with a review of the fall AMSP meeting beginning at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 20^th and ending at noon on Saturday, October 23^rd.  It will be in San Francisco; participants need to purchase the least expensive ticket as soon as possible; it is recommended people not rent a car, but rather use BART or the airport bus, or can use a taxi; and we will be staying at a wonderful hotel—the Pan Pacific.  The group will all be together for dinner and Wednesday and Friday night, and scholars need to let Marcy know whether they will be bringing a guest. 

Topics will include a delivery of 40-minute lectures by each of the new Senior Scholars; an extended presentation of “How to Give a Lecture” by Marc Schuckit; a lecture by Marc on how journals review and operate; a presentation by Susan on PowerPoint; assignment of Junior to Senior Scholars; demonstrations of abbreviated lectures by Senior Scholars; and the usual material handled at meetings.

The new scholars include Prizada Sattar from Creighton University in Nebraska, Randy Brown from the University of Wisconsin, Alisa Busch from Harvard; and Carlos Hernandez from Connecticut.  For a variety of reasons we are limiting ourselves to four scholars this year (hopefully six next), giving us some leeway to invite one or two guests for the single meeting.  These might include Karen Szumlinski currently at the University of North Carolina and about to move to Santa Barbara, Kate Kashina at the University of Wisconsin, or perhaps someone from a laboratory in San Francisco.

We next reviewed participation by AMSP at the recent Research Society on Alcoholism meeting.  An excellent poster was developed and presented by Sarah Book.  There were several potential candidates for AMSP identified through this mechanism.  This was a wonderful meeting for those of us who attended, and it was nice that members of AMSP could get together for breakfast.

The next order of business was the report by scholars regarding developments over the prior three months.  These included:

1.  Chris Delos Reyes has been invited to participate for the 2^nd year in the 2^nd-year Medical Student Lectures about Substance Use Disorders this coming October.  She gives two lectures and oversees two additional lectures.  She will also give an elective lecture on Physician Impairment.  Also at the medical school, she was invited to serve as a small-group facilitator during Orientation for the Incoming Class of 2008.

For first-year psychiatry residents, she will continue to give four lectures about substance use disorders this coming November.  This past May she served as a discussant for a 4^th year psychiatry resident who presented Grand Rounds on Physician Impairment and Recovery.

This past May she also participated for the first time as an examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.  This past June has been busy in the orientation of four new Addiction Fellows, two psychiatrists, and two non-psychiatrists.  She teaches them weekly for one and a half hours and serves as the director of the Fellowship.

In July she will be giving a lecture on psychopharmacology in persons with dual diagnosis at a statewide addiction medicine conference.  She has submitted a poster and workshop presentation for the International Conference on Physician Health and will hear back about that in August.

2.  Joseph Sakai next talked about his activities and accomplishments over the previous three months.  He discussed 1) his attempts to increase the educational activities at his medical school, and 2) miscellaneous accomplishments occurring since the March meeting of AMSP.

Joe has attempted to increase educational activities at his medical school by participating in the curriculum restructuring at the University of Colorado, School of Medicine.  He served on the Threads Committee, which attempted to identify important topic areas that should be weaved or threaded throughout the four-year curriculum.  In the last three months he wrote a “substance use disorders thread proposal” and submitted this to the committee.  This was included in an overall thread proposal (eight threads proposed), which was sent to the main curriculum committee for comment.  Four threads were approved and unfortunately, the substance use disorders proposal was rejected.  Joe was asked to remain on during the planning process as a “consultant.”

During the winter of ‘03-‘04 he (with the support of Michael Weissberg, Vice-Chair of Education, Department of Psychiatry) developed a standardized patient (SP) which has been included as one of ten cases in this years clinical practice exam given to third year medical students.  The case was developed to test a student’s ability to screen for substance use disorders in a general medical setting.  Sakai recently completed working with the standardized patient educator, training four actresses to present the case as written.  The examination is scheduled next month and he anticipates reviewing results from this exam at the AMSP October meeting.

Mike Weissberg has also invited him to help in the preparation of a manuscript on risk taking and substance use among medical students at CU.  Weissberg collected questionnaire information as part of a lecture for second-year medical students for four consecutive years.  The data support a high level of risk taking and substance use among these medical students and may also support the need for further education about substance use disorders in this group.

Sakai has also prepared cases which may be included in the third-year psychiatry rotation.  These cases are designed to cover major topic areas regarding substance use disorders and allow for self-directed learning opportunities.  He has drafted 50 questions that cover substance use disorders topics that he has proposed including in the medical student end of third-year psychiatry rotation examination.

He hopes that these pursuits may help to provide some empirical evidence of the need (or lack of a need) to increase educational activities on substance use disorders at CU Medical School. 

Finally, he presented a few recent accomplishments and updates.  First, he recently received word that he passed the Addiction Psychiatry Board Examination.  Second, he presented a poster on adolescent treatment outcome for inhalant users at the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in June.  Third, he received a favorable score on his K award application (as discussed at the March meeting), but he has not yet received an award statement.

3.  Gail Rose was promoted to Research Assistant Professor July 1.  She brought us up to date on her participation in National Alcohol Screening Day (where she supervised one resident and one medical student screening 67 new individuals), as well as her participation in the second year didactic series for psychiatry where she gave a lecture on “Brief Interventions” and facilitated case discussions on genetics of alcohol and nicotine dependence, among other topics.  She has also served as a leadership group mentor for first-year medical students, has submitted a paper on “Mentoring” (based on her lecture) to the Journal, Academic Medicine, and is co-writing with her former senior scholar mentor a second paper describing the AMSP program and outcomes.  These are all remarkable accomplishments when one considers the fact that Gail has successfully used AMSP as a way of markedly expanding her teaching at her University.

4.  Katie McQueen who brought us up to date regarding the training she is carrying out concerning brief interventions at her University.  The participants are physicians, social workers, and nurses.  In addition, Katie developed three posters for the College of Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD), and her current plans to revise a K Award.

5.  Andrea DiMartini had a very successful poster at the Research Society on Alcoholism, and has worked hard to get alcohol into the curriculum.  She is striving to develop an alcohol screening day, delivers lecture on PowerPoint and How to Give a Lecture, and is working with psychiatric residents.  She will also be lecturing in a course on statistics, demonstrating how alcohol research is an important focus of research methodology, and is working with G.I. fellows regarding alcohol screening.

6.  Marian Fireman is becoming a central person in her Department regarding the committee developing curriculum for Residents and the committee relating to Addiction Psychiatry.  She is also participating in a review of the Medical School Clerkship Didactics, planning to develop an elective relating to substance use disorders, and has expanded her work with addiction fellows.  She has also been appointed to the Residency Training Committee for the Department of Psychiatry, as well as the Residency Training Committee for Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship.  At the recent American Psychiatric Association meeting Marian presented a poster on comorbidity.  She has also recently been certified in Addiction Psychiatry.

7.  Sarah Book now works with two addiction fellows, has two third-year medical students for whom she serves as a mentor, is submitting a symposium for the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, and has been identified as a local resource for buprenorphene treatment.  She is current working on efforts to reach out to middle school students in Charleston regarding issues relating to substance use and problems, and is developing an alcohol-related lecture which she hopes to be able to incorporate in the medical students psychiatry rotation.

8.  Marianne Guschwan, an Assistant Director of AMSP, gave a quick update on activities at NYU.  Three new fourth-year psychiatry residents who are interested in addiction psychiatry are rotating in a research elective under her supervision.  She was able to utilize a lecture on the AMSP website to teach the residents about organizing a paper.  Other lectures from the website will be utilized in teaching the resident throughout the academic year.  The residents are being given topics to research and will be given the opportunity to present to a small group of senior researchers.

9.  Susan Tapert, an Associate Director, reminded the group about how well the AMSP-posted elective works for medical students.  She reviewed participation and reaction of students in the recently completed third-year for this elective at UCSD.

The brief conference call ended with good wishes offered to the graduating scholars, along with an enthusiastic look forward to our meeting in October for our new Senior Scholars and new Junior Scholars.

Marc A. Schuckit, M.D.