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Building on changes implemented at the 1997 Institute on Psychiatric Services, APA plans several new initiatives at the 1998 annual meeting in Toronto that will serve to improve the balance and quality of industry-supported sessions (ISS).
"We are carrying out many of the recommendations developed last summer by the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Industry-Supported CME activities and approved by the Scientific Program Committee," said James Thompson, M.D., director of APA's Office of Education. "Although we have a well-organized process for selection and monitoring the ISS, and most ISS are well balanced, these recommendations will further improve our ability to guard against the exceptions."
The ISS Evaluation Form has been expanded to include a rating on all presenters at industry sessions. Symposia participants will have the opportunity to grade faculty on presentation and balance in the program. Evaluation forms will be distributed and collected by APA staff and their representatives. The evaluation data on presenters will be used over time to track the performance of presenters. The Scientific Program Committee will notify speakers who receive a below-average score of the need to make improvements. Speakers who do not earn higher ratings the following year may be dropped.
Every industry supporter is required to provide an unedited audiotape of the session for review by the Scientific Program Committee. If complaints are lodged about a particular session or presenter, the tape will be reviewed.
For the first time, APA has assigned a monitor to attend each session and report to the Scientific Program Committee on several aspects of the program. The monitors consist primarily of psychiatry residents, who will be paid a small honorarium for their services. The monitor will confirm that each faculty member has displayed a slide at the beginning of his/her presentation to disclose all significant relationships, and the nature of the relationship, to all commercial entities having goods and/or services discussed in any part of the scientific program. The monitor will also collect a sample of all handouts presented during the session to confirm that they have been reviewed by the Office of Education prior to the meeting and are in compliance with all the standards for commercial support of CME activities. Finally, the monitors will note if there is any bias in the presentation or the question-and-answer session.
In addition to these new review activities at symposia sessions, APA also plans to utilize a "work group" consisting of senior APA members, management, and staff to monitor the overall activities of pharmaceutical company representatives at the annual meeting. Specific guidelines have been communicated to industry supporters, such as requiring the representatives to remain in their meeting areas and prohibiting use of any company identifiers other than an APA registration badge.
"The purpose of these new rules and monitoring mechanisms is to maintain the high quality of APA's scientific program throughout all sessions," said Thompson. "We believe that the new procedures will ensure continuation of the scientific integrity for which our annual meeting is recognized."