Community-engaged pedagogy in an emergency medicine clerkship: Teaching trauma-informed addiction care and harm reduction through a peer-assisted learning case

Abstract

Background: The impact of opioid use disorder (OUD) in the United States continues to rise, yet this topic has limited coverage in most medical school curricula. The study partnered with academic and community harm reductionists to design a peer-assisted learning case of opioid withdrawal to teach fourth-year medical students about trauma-informed OUD care and harm reduction services during their emergency medicine clerkship.

Methods: Academic and community harm reductionists iteratively codesigned this case in partnership with the research team. Community-engaged pedagogy informed this process to promote social action and power sharing through education. This case was integrated into the existing weekly peer-assisted learning curriculum (i.e., medical students teaching medical students through a structured case) for all fourth-year medical students during their required emergency medicine clinical rotation. Participants completed a postcase evaluation survey.

Results: Sixty-four medical students completed the survey between June and November 2022. A total of 98.5% of participants found the educational session quite or extremely relevant to their medical education, and 87.5% believed the case to be quite or extremely effective in achieving the learning objectives. A total of 45.3% initially felt quite or extremely competent in talking with patients about their drug use, whereas 53.2% felt quite or extremely more competent after participating in the case. Finally, 21.9% initially felt quite or extremely competent in proposing a treatment plan for a patient who uses drugs, whereas 62.5% felt quite or extremely more competent after participating in the case.

Conclusions: This study supports the feasibility and importance of incorporating the voices of people with lived and living experience into medical school curricular development. This peer-assisted learning case focused on the treatment of OUD in the emergency department was seamlessly integrated into the existing curriculum and well received by medical students. By engaging local experts, it could easily be adapted and expanded to other sites.