Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jun;55(6):362-366.
doi: 10.22454/FamMed.2023.340020. Epub 2023 Mar 13.

An Evaluation of STFM's National Addiction Curriculum

Randi Sokol  1 , John Ahern  1 , Brandon Pleman  1 , Paul Rizzo  1 , A Taylor Walker  1 , Katherine Wang  2 , Matthew P Martin  3
Affiliations

An Evaluation of STFM's National Addiction Curriculum

Randi Sokol et al. Fam Med. 2023 Jun.

Abstract

Background and objectives: Family physicians are well positioned to treat patients with substance use disorders (SUDs), expand access to care, destigmatize addiction, and provide a biopsychosocial treatment approach. There is a great need to train residents and faculty to competency in SUD treatment. Through the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Addiction Collaborative, we created and evaluated the first national family medicine (FM) addiction curriculum using evidence-based content and teaching principles.

Methods: After launching the curriculum with 25 FM residency programs, we collected formative feedback through monthly faculty development sessions and summative feedback through 8 focus groups with 33 faculty members and 21 residents. We used qualitative thematic analysis to assess the value of the curriculum.

Results: The curriculum enriched resident and faculty knowledge across all SUD topics. It changed their attitudes in viewing addiction as a chronic disease within the scope of FM practice, increased confidence, and decreased stigma. It nurtured behavior change, enhancing communication and assessment skills and encouraging collaboration across disciplines. Participants valued the flipped-classroom approach, videos, cases, role plays, ready-made teacher's guides, and one-page summaries. Having protected time to complete the modules and temporally coupling the modules with the live, faculty-led sessions enhanced learning.

Conclusion: The curriculum provides a comprehensive, ready-made, evidenced-based platform for training residents and faculty in SUDs. It can be implemented by faculty with all levels of prior expertise, cotaught by physicians and behavioral health providers, tailored to each program's didactic schedule, and modified based on the local culture and resource availability.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. CASA. The National Center on Substance Abuse at Columbia University . National Center on Substance Abuse at Columbia University; 2000. Missed opportunity: national survey of primary care physicians and patients on substance abuse .
    1. Ahmad F B, Rossen L M, Sutton P. Provisional drug overdose death counts. National Center for Health Statistics; 2021.
    1. Rowe T A, Jacapraro J S, Rastegar D A. Entry into primary care-based buprenorphine treatment is associated with identification and treatment of other chronic medical problems. Addict Sci Clin Pract. 2012;7(1):22–22. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lipari R N, Park-Lee E, Horn Van, S. America’s need for and receipt of substance use treatment in 2015; The CBHSQ Report: September 29, 2016. Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality; Rockville, MD.
    1. Jones C M, Campopiano M, Baldwin G, Mccance-Katz E. National and state treatment need and capacity for opioid agonist medication-assisted treatment. Am J Public Health. 2015;105(8):55–63. - PMC - PubMed