Neuropsychology in Practice: From Test Results to Report and Advice

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Students learn to integrate several aspects of a neuropsychological examination. This kind of examination can be used both in clinical settings and in clinical research and contains the following aspects: interview, clinical impression, test results, rating scales, questionnaires, etc. Learning to interpret and integrate the different aspects will result in a coherent neuropsychological report and conclusion. Tests and theoretical and practical knowledge will be presented in the current skills training to help students achieve the course goals. Note that the major focus of this skills training is not to test a patient or a subject participating in a study, but to interpret the data and to discuss the findings with the patients by means of role playing.

The skills training consists of eight meetings. In the first two meetings, an overview will be presented of the skills needed to form a conclusion about the data acquired by testing a patient or research subject. Furthermore, students will practise performing and interpreting tests, rating scales and questionnaires. The use of normative data, the concept of validity and what to do when a subject’s performance is lower, or otherwise deviant from what would be expected, will also be addressed.

Meetings three to eight will be led by clinical experts. Video segments of different patients with a neuropsychological or psychiatric problem (e.g. patients from the departments of psychiatry, neurology and geriatrics) will form the basis of a group discussion and presentations, in which the emphasis will be on the interpretation of patient material. In the final meeting an actual patient is interviewed by the students, and the neuropsychological test results are reported back to the patient.