Burnt Out: Rate of Burnout in Neuropsychology Survey Respondents During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Brief Communication.

OBJECTIVE: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, burnout among healthcare workers has significantly increased. This study evaluated rates of burnout in neuropsychologists one year into the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: A survey invitation was sent across five neuropsychology-related listservs in April 2021. Burnout was assessed with the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI; Kristensen, T. S., Borritz, M., Villadsen, E., & Christensen, K. B. (2005). The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory: A new tool for the assessment of burnout. Work & Stress, 19 (3), 192-207) and differences in Personal, Work, and Client burnout scores were evaluated across patient population and work setting. RESULTS: 57.3% and 51.5% of respondents (N = 130) endorsed moderate-to-high levels of personal and work-related burnout, respectively. In the Personal domain, respondents working with pediatric patients had higher mean scores and a higher proportion of respondents endorsed moderate-to-high levels of burnout. CONCLUSION: More than half of the survey respondents endorsed elevated levels of personal and work-related burnout. This is concerning as burnout is associated with personal challenges and diminished patient care. Potential organizational interventions are discussed.

Initial changes in neuropsychologists clinical practice during the COVID-19 pandemic: A survey study.

Objective: In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of clinicians have had to quickly and dramatically alter their clinical practices. Two surveys were administered on 3/26/2020 and 3/30/2020, respectively, to document immediate changes and challenges in clinical practice.Method: Two surveys were administered between 3/26/2020 and 3/30/2020, via SurveyMonkey and Google Forms, asking clinicians questions pertaining to practice issues during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative responses from the second survey were stratified by clinical setting (Medical Hospital vs. Private Practice) prior to analysis. Qualitative, free-response items were coded by the authors to better understand immediate changes in practice and other concerns.Results: 266 neuropsychologists completed Survey 1 and 230 completed Survey 2. Results suggest that practices immediately moved towards remote service provision. A meaningful proportion of clinicians and their staff were immediately affected economically by the pandemic, with clinicians in private practice differentially affected. Furthermore, a small but significant minority of respondents faced ethical dilemmas related to service provision and expressed concerns with initial communication from their employment organizations. Respondents requested clear best-practice guidelines from neuropsychological practice organizations.Conclusions: It is clear that field of neuropsychology has drastically shifted clinical practices in response to COVID-19 and is likely to continue to evolve. While these responses were collected in the early stages of stay-at-home orders, policy changes continue to occur and it is paramount that practice organizations consider the initial challenges expressed by clinicians when formulating practice recommendations and evaluating the clinical utility of telehealth services.

The Stroop test as a measure of performance validity in adults clinically referred for neuropsychological assessment.

This study was designed to develop performance validity indicators embedded within the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function Systems (D-KEFS) version of the Stroop task. Archival data from a mixed clinical sample of 132 patients (50% male; MAge = 43.4; MEducation = 14.1) clinically referred for neuropsychological assessment were analyzed. Criterion measures included the Warrington Recognition Memory Test-Words and 2 composites based on several independent validity indicators. An age-corrected scaled score ≤6 on any of the 4 trials reliably differentiated psychometrically defined credible and noncredible response sets with high specificity (.87-.94) and variable sensitivity (.34-.71). An inverted Stroop effect was less sensitive (.14-.29), but comparably specific (.85-90) to invalid performance. Aggregating the newly developed D-KEFS Stroop validity indicators further improved classification accuracy. Failing the validity cutoffs was unrelated to self-reported depression or anxiety. However, it was associated with elevated somatic symptom report. In addition to processing speed and executive function, the D-KEFS version of the Stroop task can function as a measure of performance validity. A multivariate approach to performance validity assessment is generally superior to univariate models. (PsycINFO Database Record

CVLT-II Forced Choice Recognition Trial as an Embedded Validity Indicator: A Systematic Review of the Evidence.

OBJECTIVES: The Forced Choice Recognition (FCR) trial of the California Verbal Learning Test, 2nd edition, was designed as an embedded performance validity test (PVT). To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review of classification accuracy against reference PVTs. METHODS: Results from peer-reviewed studies with FCR data published since 2002 encompassing a variety of clinical, research, and forensic samples were summarized, including 37 studies with FCR failure rates (N=7575) and 17 with concordance rates with established PVTs (N=4432). RESULTS: All healthy controls scored >14 on FCR. On average, 16.9% of the entire sample scored ≤14, while 25.9% failed reference PVTs. Presence or absence of external incentives to appear impaired (as identified by researchers) resulted in different failure rates (13.6% vs. 3.5%), as did failing or passing reference PVTs (49.0% vs. 6.4%). FCR ≤14 produced an overall classification accuracy of 72%, demonstrating higher specificity (.93) than sensitivity (.50) to invalid performance. Failure rates increased with the severity of cognitive impairment. CONCLUSIONS: In the absence of serious neurocognitive disorder, FCR ≤14 is highly specific, but only moderately sensitive to invalid responding. Passing FCR does not rule out a non-credible presentation, but failing FCR rules it in with high accuracy. The heterogeneity in sample characteristics and reference PVTs, as well as the quality of the criterion measure across studies, is a major limitation of this review and the basic methodology of PVT research in general. (JINS, 2016, 22, 851-858).

The NEO-FFI in Multiple Sclerosis: internal consistency, factorial validity, and correspondence between self and informant reports.

Personality assessment is a potentially important component of clinical and empirical work with neurological patients because (a) individual differences in personality may be associated with different neurological outcomes and (b) central nervous system changes may give rise to alteration in personality. For personality assessment to be useful to clinicians and researchers, the tests must be reliable and valid, as self-report measures require certain baseline levels of comprehension and insight, both of which can be compromised by cerebral disease. In this study, the authors examined the psychometric properties of the widely used NEO Five-Factor Inventory in a group of 419 patients with multiple sclerosis. Their objective was to determine if the NEO Five-Factor Inventory is reliable and valid in this population. Results showed adequate estimates of internal consistency, factorial validity, and self-informant correlation that support its use with patients with multiple sclerosis. Implications, limitations of the current study, and directions for future research are discussed.