The American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) and the American Society of Hematology (ASH) are partnering on an independent educational grant from Celgene Corporation to update, enhance, and expand ASCP’s existing myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) curriculum. This represents the second independent educational grant award by Celgene to ASCP for this program. The curriculum, titled, “The Diagnosis, Classification, and Clinical Care of MDS (DC3-MDS),” was developed in 2012 from the first educational grant by Celgene.
Since deployment of the original educational solution, more than 392 pathologists and hematopathologists have completed the MDS educational activities, and more than 2,000 unique participants have engaged in the online portal. The program will consist of the following components:
- A systems survey will be distributed to the ASCP and ASH memberships to determine the current state of interdisciplinary MDS care. The survey will gather data about variations in local practice patterns and system capabilities, including patient identification, referral patterns, collection and analysis of specimens, and composition of local interdisciplinary MDS teams. In addition, the variation of current diagnosis patterns and clinician skills will be assessed.
- The results of the systems survey will be used to assist in the development of educational content for a series of live meetings and enduring materials.
- After the curriculum is established, a series of six live meetings will be held at sites across the United States, including one that will be held at ASCP’s 2015 Annual Meeting and one that will be held at ASH’s 2015 Annual Meeting. The four remaining sites will be selected based on criteria defined by the grant steering committee.
- Each live meeting will consist of four faculty experts who will deliver content in multiple formats including interactive and multidisciplinary problem-based workshops. To ensure a consistent educational message across all live meetings, faculty will be participate in a live training Webinar which will be held before implementation of each of the live meetings. View the online portal for the Diagnosis, Classification and Clinical Care of MDS program.
