Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Addiction Medicine Selective to Increase Resident Confidence in Treating Patients with Substance use Disorder
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Publication Date
2025
Keywords
oregon, oaa 2025, milwaukie
Disciplines
Behavioral Medicine | Medical Education | Substance Abuse and Addiction
Abstract
Background: Substance use disorder is a growing problem across America. It is important that primary care physicians are well trained and comfortable treating these conditions. ACGME has also prioritized this area of resident learning and increased required elective time for residents. To create better educated doctors and follow guidelines placed by the ACGME, we developed a four-week curriculum, called the addiction medicine selective, to increase resident comfort and knowledge in diagnosing and treating patients with substance use disorders in multiple settings. Methods: Analyze the effectiveness of a four-week addiction medicine focused cur-riculum with an anonymous, categorical survey that was administered to all second- and third-year residents at the beginning and end of the 2024-2025 academic year. 7 out of 14 residents completed the addiction medicine selective during this academic year. The survey included a confidence scale from not confident, slightly confident, somewhat confident, fairly confident and completely confident/fully independent regarding specific topics in diagnosing and managing substance use disorders in an inpatient and outpatient setting. Results: 11 residents completed the pre selective survey and 14 completed the post selective survey. Overall, there was an average increase of 33% in those who felt fairly confident or higher in all topics related to treating opioid and alcohol use disorder. Knowledge around community resources for patients with substance use disorder had the smallest change in response with only a 14% increase to fairly confident or higher. For the residents who completed the selective, they were all slightly confident or higher in all topics. Only residents who took the selective felt they could independently diagnose alcohol and opioid use disorder. No resident felt completely confident in outpatient treatment of alcohol or opioid use disorder. Conclusion: There was an overall increase in residents who felt fairly confident or more in treating opioid and alcohol use disorders, which can be explained by the inherent nature of residency. However, there was a noticeable increase in confidence across all topics for those who completed the addiction medicine selective. In addition, more residents felt they could independently diagnose use disorder. In general, the selective did increase resident comfort and knowledge when caring for patients with substance use disorders. However, no residents felt completely confident in treating these conditions in an outpatient setting despite completing the selective. There are several factors that make outpatient management challenging for any health condition, but we will reach out to residents to get a better understanding of this difference compared to inpatient management. There was also a knowledge gap in community resources, which we are creating a dot phrase for so that this information is readily accessible to residents. Having an understanding of the available resources may also help to improve outpatient management. There were several limitations to this study, such as small sample size and the lack of consistent identifiers for the pre and post surveys. As a result, we were unable to analyze and correlate the improvement for an individual after completing the addiction medicine selective. This should be implemented for future surveys when analyzing the effectiveness of a curriculum
Area of Special Interest
Mental Health
Specialty/Research Institute
Graduate Medical Education
Specialty/Research Institute
Behavioral Health
