Category: Travel

Travel posts by Jano Klimas who writes about academic mobility, hotels, B&B, jetlags and culture shock.

How to find non-academic mentors

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mentor, climbing

Mentors facilitate professional development in academia. But non-academic mentors are equally important. Here, I acknowledge non-academic mentors and their contribution to my development as a professional and as a person.

Engage in not for profit organizations.

Two organizations jump started my work in non-profits, the University Pastoral Centre and a youth club. I learned the power of community building through youth activism with John Lesondak and taught team building for non-profits with Ivan Humenik. With Ivan and friends, we also had a musical band, JK& band. These activities inspired me to get involved in the community projects for people who use drugs. (more…)

America could relax opioid treatment access policies

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Canada and the United States (U.S.) face an opioid use disorder and opioid overdose epidemic.

The most effective OUD treatment is opioid agonist therapy (OAT). It means buprenorphine (with and without naloxone) and methadone. Although federal approval for OAT occurred decades ago, in both countries, access to and use of OAT is low. Restrictive policies and complex regulations contribute to limited treatment access. (more…)

Excellent scale assesses needs across four countries

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ruler

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:

We wanted to find out whether a new tool – Training Need Assessment – does what it’s set to do, measure training needs.

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?

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