REAL Education™
USA CME Experiential Active Learning™

In collaboration with SK Associates, USA CME and Sheryl Kingsberg, PhD. introduce REAL-HSDD™

REAL-HSDD™ is a robust, customizable active-learning program built on the industry-leading HealthCourse® learning management platform used annually by over 500,000 healthcare professionals.

REAL Education™ Case Study

REAL-HSDD™ Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder Education Program

OBJECTIVE: To improve healthcare professional HSDD diagnostic and treatment competencies while increasing basic and clinical science knowledge and applied clinical confidence. This REAL-HSDD™ curriculum; focused on FDA approved claims and appropriate patient selection (post-menopausal HSDD), was designed to examine participant clinical skill sets when evaluating patients with a chief complaint of low sexual desire and to certify them for clinical trial participation.

With clinical design consultation from Dr. Kingsberg, a series of challenging, real-world clinical HSDD scenarios were developed for REAL-HSDD™. REAL-HSDD™ office-based videos feature highly trained standardized patient actors being interviewed by Dr. Kingsberg in office and exam room dramatizations. These clinical scenarios included appropriate trial enrollment candidate scenarios (minimum duration of HSDD symptoms for six months) as well as clinical scenarios involving patients with symptom complexes inappropriate for trial inclusion.

All participants in the REAL-HSDD™ clinical trial certification program were required to demonstrate an understanding of how the loss of drive, (the biologic component of desire), and relationship or psychological factors can define HSDD and non-HSDD causes of decreased sexual desire. If a woman had low desire that led to relationship problems or depressed mood—this was deemed consistent with diagnosis of HSDD for trial inclusion purposes. In contrast, if a woman initially was in a bad relationship or was depressed, and that lead to low desire, this was not consistent with a diagnosis of HSDD as was defined by the clinical trial’s inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Certification as an approved clinical trial participant required successfully completing all scored and un-scored modules of the online REAL-HSDD™ training program while achieving 100% proficiency in the HSDD diagnosis and appropriate patient selection modules. After viewing each office visit scenario in its entirety, potential clinical trialists were required to select a correct diagnosis from a range of possible diagnoses and then determine the appropriateness of the subject for the trial. All aspects of learner participation in REAL-HSDD™ were tracked and reported using the HealthCourse® program dashboard reporting tool along with automated individualized learner communications based on progress and results.

After submitting a clinical scenario answer REAL-HSDD™ learners had the opportunity to review Dr. Kingsburg’s expert video commentary on each scenario describing the correct diagnosis and the appropriateness or inappropriateness of each patient for inclusion in the trial.