Use of CME (Continuing Medical Education) to impact self-reported changes in the evaluation and management of anaemia in geriatric patients: An important topic for those of us with CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia)

Honestly, most of my fellow family doctors (FP) know very little hematology. This may be even more true of other primary care providers.

The ABFM board exams for family doctors dedicated a whopping 1% of all the questions to hematology- that is for everything from a simple iron deficiency anemia to a life threatening acute leukemia. Not much incentive to become expert.

As one of the few FP who lives and breathe heme with a deep and abiding personal stake in making sure that all things blood related are done right, and also as doctor with a long background in teaching, in fact a masters of science degree in Medical Education (all my initials are MDCM FCFP, DABFP, MS Ed), this publication on teaching my colleagues about the importance of anemia in the elderly and all the work that lead up to it definitely was a topic in my wheelhouse.

I was lucky to be involved in all ages of this effort: helped with the content development and served as faculty for all the live presentations to thousands of primary care providers across the country and worked on the very cool mobile app: Anemia Algorithm. Click here for the iPhone and here for the Android downloads (>15,000 total downloads). Finally I co-authored what culimated in the actual peer reviewed publication. 

The take away message of all our educational effort is that anemia (or if you prefer the British: anaemia) is not a normal part of aging, shouldn't be ignored and is often related to bone marrow issues that can be helped by a hematologist. 

Sadly, MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) is too often missed by my fellow doctors. MDS are a group of bone marrow disorders in which the bone marrow is dysfunctional, cancerous, and does not produce adequate healthy blood cells resulting in either anemia or infections or bleeding problems or in more difficult cases,  dangerous combination of all three, depending on what hematopoietic stem cell line or lines are effected. This is an increasingly real and common concern for us CLL patients as we live longer, especially those of us who have had chemotherapy. Past history of chemotherapy is a long recognized risk factor for developing MDS. Please take a listen to this ASH 2012 prior post on CLL and MDS from one of my co-authors, Dr. David Steensma who is a recognized world expert on MDS and geriatric anemia. My other co-authors are Jill Hays and Kathy Farmer with whom I worked at Primary Care Network on CME, and Betsy Dennison who besides doing CME and patient education, works with the CLL Society. I am lucky to be part of such a fine team of researchers and educators.

We wanted to measure if we made a difference through continuing medical education in patients' lives, and looks like we did. That is the subject of our publication.

Subsequently, I have stepped away from much of what I do in non-CLL related medical education to be able to volunteer more of my time to the nonprofit CLL Society, but I wanted to share some of the past work that I have done to educate my fellow doctors over the past several years. I am very proud of these educational endeavors and they clearly inform all that I do on the blog and even more so now on our new website, CLLSociety.org. The new website is dedicated to educational efforts that move the bar higher by first surveying and assessing what is needed in the CLL community, teaching to those needs and following up to see if we made impact.

As a doctor, a patient and an educator, I and the rest of the CLL Society team try to reach beyond journalism to education, support, research, and advocacy, not just posting pleasant videos that report good news, but digging to point out the good and bad that might have serious treatment implications for us CLL patients. We have an vision: smart patients get smart care.

LIVE FROM ASH 2012

Let me use this post just to set the scene. I will bear news soon, all of it good, some of it incredible.

There is so much happening at ASH, often at the same time. There are several incidences when I have highlighted three different important presentations related to CLL for the same 15 minute slot that I would love to attend. That's not going to happen.

Add to this is that the conference center is so huge that it can take 20 minutes or longer to walk from one  lecture hall to another. I actually walk much more inside the building than the pleasant 15 minute walk through centennial park to the center from the hotel.

Add to that some 15,000 attendees, all of whom are in the halls between sessions with the proficient and helpful staff directing the heavy to and fro foot traffic through the long corridors and onto the narrow escalators.

So far one and a half days into it, I have interviewed Drs. Pagel, Kipps, and Steensma. Andrew Schorr interviewed me and I returned the favor, asking him about his coping with a secondary cancer. I have video from the press conference on ibrutinib given by Dr. Byrd.

So much more yet to happen.

Without my professional videographer, my oldest son, Ben, it would be impossible to pull this off.

The logistics are tricky. At the Georgia World Congress Center, we are constantly rejiggering the schedule, lining up the hematologists ( think herding cats), procuring the much in demand interview rooms, setting and resetting up redundant recording systems, doing the sound and video checks, and finally making sure the actual interviews runs on time. Rushing back to the hotel, Ben is recharging batteries, downloading the video cards, running our backups, and doing all the trouble shooting.

In between I am attending lectures and trying to find something vegan to eat.

The first sessions start at 7:30 AM and the last can finish at 8AM.

It makes for a long, busy but incredibly rewarding day.

I am so lucky to be here, to have my son's help and to have access to the generosity and wisdom of so many doctors.