Reach of Benchmark Psychiatric Trial Results to Community-Based Providers: A Case Study of CATIE

Objective: To evaluate the familiarity of front-line clinicians with findings from the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE), the influence of didactic continuing medical education on provider knowledge about key details of CATIE, and how location-related factors affect rates of pre-event knowledge and intraevent learning about CATIE.

Method: Data derived from the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy (MGH-PA) semester II live symposia provided in different cities nationally between September and December 2006 were analyzed to evaluate providers’ self-assessment of their knowledge about CATIE. In addition, participants were also asked a preactivity and postactivity question to assess learning of material presented during the live event psychosis lecture. Descriptive statistics were utilized to characterize participants’ self-assessment of knowledge about CATIE, while parametric and nonparametric statistical tests were used to evaluate the degree of observed learning and the effect of lecture location on the results.

Results: 3333 participants (mean attendance: N = 278 per event) attended 1 of the 12 MGH-PA live symposia. Of the subsample of providers who treat schizophrenia, 51% indicated that either they had never heard of CATIE or they were not familiar enough with its results to change their practice. Overall, the proportion of correct answers on the postactivity question was 65%, compared with 24% prior to the lecture (chi² = 48.68, df = 1, p < .001). Degree of learning did not differ among symposium locations.

Conclusion: In this sample, the CATIE study had very limited dissemination to, and impact on, a geographically and occupationally diverse sample of mental health practitioners. Robust learning of a key methodologic detail of this trial was evidenced across symposium locations.