Hospital teaching team keeps fighting opioid crisis
Which student learns best with hospital teams fighting opioid crisis? Understanding how students learn is perhaps the most important way to improve addiction training.
In a new article published by the Substance Abuse journal, we report findings suggesting that the completion of an elective with a hospital-based Addiction Medicine Consult Team appeared to improve knowledge of medical students more than of other types of students. Read more below or listen to the podcast.
Firstly, we found that both emerging and established physicians appear to be responsive to this type of training. Secondly, the learner self-assessment can provide valuable feedback to the consultants. Then, consultants can focus more on the students who learn less.
Keep fighting opioid crisis through training
The study sample was drawn from medical students, residents and physicians who took part in a month-long rotation with a hospital-based addiction medicine consult team in Vancouver, Canada. The addiction rotation includes full-time clinical training involving intake assessment and treatment planning. And referrals to community agencies and starting people on evidence-based medications for substance use disorders. The students take part in didactic lectures, bedside teaching, journal clubs and some prepare papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals. Each year, about 80 learners go through the program. Furthermore, learners rate their knowledge before and after the training.
At the end, all learners reported increased knowledge. One group, however, learned more than the others – the medical students. This two-year study confirms that a structured clinical training program can lead to an increased knowledge on addiction and that medical students benefit from it the most.
For more info read the full article at:
Gorfinkel, L., Klimas, J., Ahamad, K., Mead, A., McLean, M., Fairgrieve, C., Nolan, S., Small, W., Cullen, W., Wood, E., Fairbairn, N. (2019) In-hospital training in addiction medicine: A mixed methods study of health care provider benefits and differences. Substance Abuse (Published online Jan 28) doi: 10.1080/08897077.2018.1561596
If interested, you can also read: What can hospital teams teach medical students about addiction to help curb the opioid overdose epidemic?
Hospital teaching teams confront iatrogenic opioid addiction
Or visit a post that talks about this research as it was presented at the Canadian Society for Addiction Medicine link here
Excellent scale assesses needs across four countries
What is the smartest scale for asking clinicians about their training needs?
In a new article published by the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, we report findings from a study that looked at a new scale, the training needs assessment. Read more or watch podcast below:
| QUICK FACT: Addiction Medicine (AM) rarely uses Training Need Assessments (TNA). |
How we did the study?
We did a cross-sectional study in four countries (Indonesia, Ireland, Lithuania and the Netherlands). 483 health professionals working in addiction care completed AM-TNA. To assess the factor structure, we used explorative factor analysis. Reliability was tested using Cronbach’s Alpha, ANOVA determined the discriminative validity.
What has the scale found?
- Tailored training of health professionals is one of the elements to narrow the “scientific knowledge-addiction treatment” gap. Addiction Medicine (AM) rarely uses Training Need Assessments (TNA). The AM-TNA scale is a reliable, valid instrument to measure addiction medicine training needs. The AM-TNA helps to determine the profile of future addiction specialist.
The Training Need Assessment is a reliable, valid instrument to measure addiction medicine training needs.
Why is the scale important?
The AM-TNA proved reliable and valid. Additionally, the AM training needs in the non-clinical domain appeared positively related to the overall level of AM proficiency. Furthermore, researchers should study whether the AM-TNA can also measure changes in AM competencies over time and compare different health professionals. Finally, the AM-TNA assists tailoring training to national, individual and group addiction priorities.
| Reference: Pinxten, W.J.L. et al. (2019) Excellent reliability and validity of the Addiction Medicine Training Need Assessment Scale across four countries. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment , Volume 99 , 61 – 66 |
For more info read the full article in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 99 (2019) 61–66 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2019.01.009
Read more about this topic in a post from 2017: What are the core skills of an addiction expert?
You can also read a related post from 2015: International Society of Addiction Medicine | Congress #isam2015
International Society of Addiction Medicine | Congress #isam2015
Do more drug tests improve addiction treatment?
Frequent drug tests in addiction treatment have become a common practice despite proven benefits of such testing. When do tests become the end instead of the means to health and wellness?
In a previous post, I have explained how there was no agreement on the frequency of drug testing in Canada. Not until March 2018, when the British Columbia Centre on Substance use released the National guidelines for opioid use disorder. This article looks at the scientific evidence (or the lack of it) for frequent drug testing in addiction treatment. Read more or watch podcast below:
What is the study about?
We wanted to find out whether frequent urine drug tests correspond with better outcomes of treatment with opioid agonists such as methadone or buprenorphine.
How we did the study ?
We looked at the scientific literature from 1995 up until the end of 2017.
Then, we wanted to see how often the screening should be done while in the opiod agonist treatment. In the study, we included people of any gender, age or ethnicity.
Frequent drug tests lack evidence
We found only one higher quality studies with patients from USA
The study compared weekly and monthly urine drug testing with take-home doses of opioid agonists
Our review identified an urgent gap in research evidence underpinning an area of clinical importance and that is routinely reported by patients as an area of concern
Why is the study important?
Opioid use disorder is a chronic condition impacting the reward, motivation and memory pathways of the brain (ASAM, 2017).
Opioid agonist therapy is a first-line treatment for opioid use disorder.
The frequency and role of urine drug screening in opioid agonist treatment has received little research attention.
Although prior evidence suggests that testing frequency reflects philosophy and practice context, rather than differences in patient characteristics or clinical need, frequent urine testing remains under-researched.
What for?
Finally, the editorial of the Canadian Journal of Addiction featured this study as important for bringing additional management aspects for consideration:
| Reference:
McEachern J, Adye-White L, Priest KC, Moss E, Gorfinkel L, Wood E, Cullen W, Klimas J: Lacking evidence for the association between frequent urine drug screening and health outcomes of persons on opioid agonist therapy. International Journal of Drug Policy 2019, 64:30-33. |
If you enjoyed reading this piece, you may wish to read the previous article on this topic here, or here.
Place matters, teachers and learners #CCME18
We learn best in places that support our learning and our bio psycho socio spiritual development – from toddlers to elders, reports Jan Klimas from the Canadian Medical Education conference #CCME18.
Starting in Toronto, Justin Hsu and colleagues from University of Toronto described how they improved spaces for communities in teaching ambulatory care, or the so called Medical Education Teaching Clinics (METC). They plan to evaluate METC clinics via audit of referrals to the teaching clinic and the learner satisfaction survey.
Presentation title: Creating unique spaces to support community-based ambulatory care education: the E3 experience.
Presentation authors: Jerry Maniate, Elizabeth Wooster, Douglas Wooster, Justin Hsu
British Columbia quality matters
Jan Klimas’ team from University of British Columbia evaluated hospital as a place of learning about substance use disorders. Who learns most about addictions in hospitals? Using mixed-methods approach, this team showed that medical students get more out of a rotation in hospital than residents or senior learners. Especially in the areas of safe prescribing, screening and withdrawal management. Why is that? Do residents know more or are they more resistant to new learning? For many medical students, hospital could be the first place where they see someone with addiction and that could be why they learn more in this setting.
Presentation title: Who learns most about addiction in the hospitals? A mixed methods study.
Presentation authors: Jan Klimas, Evan Wood, Walter Cullen, Will Small, Seonaid Nolan, Annabel Mead, Mark McLean, Christophe Fairgrieve, Keith Ahamad, Huiru Dong, Breanne Reel, Lauren Gorfinkel, Nadia Fairbairn
Derek Wilson and colleagues from the same university focused on the quality of health education learning environment (HELES study). HELES survey tool looked at relationship, personal development and program culture as the key parts of the learning environment at the faculty of medicine. For example, the evaluation asked whether the learners have developed a strong sense of community.
Presentation title: Evaluating the Quality of Health Professions Learning Environments: Validation of the Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES).
Presentation authors: Derek Wilson, Shayna Rusticus, Derek Wilson, Oscar Casiro, Kevin Eva, Lisa Hazlett, Chris Lovato
Calgary explores and experiences
Maureen Topps and collaborators from University of Calgary, Cumming School of Medicine, asked whether in addition to focusing on the deficiencies and gaps in education, whether we could research the successful activities related to professionalism. The postgraduate education is a key stage in training the next generation of competent and professional clinicians. Professionalism is hard to define and to define it may “limit it,” as Dr Barnhoorn writes in the Academic Medicine journal (2006, Vol. 91, No. 9). But how does the place of learning make for more professional doctors? Slowing down and taking time to plan interactions appears to foster professionalism among other factors such as communication training.
Presentation title: Contexts and Experiences of Postgraduate Residents that support successfully meeting professionalism challenges.
Presentation authors: Janet de Groot, Maureen Topps, Aliya Kassam, Maureen Topps
Nicole Delaloye and colleagues from the same university presented results from her Masters research of the MSc/MD program. Clinicians should be both polite and respective, but not overly submissive. Why do we follow orders? Resuscitation requires wise action, not passive deference. What happens when learners hold back too much and how does the place of learning impact submissiveness? Mechanisms that underly submission in the moment of revival include learner’s mental state, what was going on inside and outside the room, team and motivation.
Presentation title: An Exploration of Deference Behaviours Exhibited within the Paediatric Resuscitation Environment and the Educational Implications.
Presentation authors: Nicole Delaloye, Elaine Gilfoyle, Rachel Ellaway, Aliya Kassam, Elizabeth Oddone Paolucci
In summary, the best learning places not only support our learning, but also challenge us to learn knew knowledge, adopt the discipline’s values, overcome deference and become successful professionals in our own right.
The opinions and views in this article present the views of the author and not the named persons or the #CCME18 conference organisers.
6 ways to improve addiction training
Addiction training is feasible and acceptable for doctors and junior physicians; however, important barriers persist. We need to learn more about the experience of addiction physicians in the fellowship training programs. Here are the 6 ways to help improve the training.
6 ways to better training
Recently, new programmes have emerged to train the comprehensive addiction medicine professionals internationally and one of them is in Vancouver, Canada. We interviewed 26 persons who completed this training programme. They were psychiatrists, internal medicine and family medicine physicians, faculty, mentors, medical students and residents. All received both addiction medicine and research training. We found six barriers and enablers of training implementation: (1) organisations, (2) structures, (3) teachers, (4) learners, (5) patients and (6) community. Human resources, a variety of rotations, peer support and mentoring fostered implementation of addiction training. Money, time as well as space limitations hindered implementation.
Why training clinicians in addictions
Addiction care is usually provided by unskilled lay-persons in most countries and thus the resulting care inadequate. Effective treatments are overlooked and millions of people suffer despite recent discovery of new treatments for substance use disorders. In rare instances when addiction care is provided by medical professionals, they are not adequately trained in caring for people with substance use disorders; therefore, feel unprepared to provide such care. Physician scientists are the bridge between science and practice. Despite large evidence-base upon which to base clinical practice, most health systems have not combined training of healthcare providers in addiction medicine and research.
Klimas, J., Small, W., Ahamad, K., Mead, A., Rieb, L., Cullen, W., Wood, E., McNeil, R. (2017) Barriers and Facilitators to Implementing Addiction Medicine Fellowships: A Qualitative Study with Fellows, Medical Students, Residents and Preceptors. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 12:21
https://ascpjournal.biomedcentral.com/