Effects of implementing an interactive substance use disorders workshop on a family medicine clerkship

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Substance use disorders (SUD) remain a public health crisis and training has been insufficient to provide the skills necessary to combat this crisis. We aimed to create and study an interac-tive, destigmatizing, skills-based workshop for medical students to evaluate if this changes students’ self-reported knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward patients with SUD. METHODS: We surveyed students on a required family medicine outpatient rotation at a Pacific Northwest medical school during clerkship orientation on their views regarding SUDs utilizing the validated Drug and Drug Problems Perceptions Questionnaire containing a 7-point Likert scale. After attending a substance use disorder workshop, they repeated the survey. We calculated differences between the paired pre-to postsurveys. RESULTS: We collected the pre-and postdata for 118 students who attend-ed the workshop and showed statistically significant positive differences on all items. CONCLUSIONS: The positive change in the medical students’ reported attitudes suggests both necessity and feasibility in teaching SUD skills in a des-tigmatizing way in medical training. Positive changes also suggest a role of exposing students to family medicine and/or primary care as a strategy to learn competent care for patients with substance use disorders.