You are invited to participate in a pilot project that is a national, interprofessional online curriculum targeting entry-level healthcare professional trainees. By getting involved, you can learn from experts in the field while sharing knowledge of your profession with learners from other disciplines! This is an exciting opportunity to change how health professionals are trained about substance use disorders.
Course Goal
Gain foundational knowledge and develop the clinical skills to treat those with substance use disorders.
Course Description
Addiction Treatment: Clinical Skills for Healthcare Providers is designed with a singular goal: to improve the care you provide to your patients with substance use disorders. By delving into a model case performed by actors, seven Yale University instructors from various healthcare fields provide techniques to screen your patients for substance use disorder risk, diagnose patients to gauge the severity of their use, directly define and manage treatment plans, refer out to appropriate treatment services, and navigate the various conditions that may limit your patient’s access to treatment. Identify what ongoing resources will be helpful in maintaining their continuum of care and recovery. You will ultimately be prepared to provide compassionate and evidence-based care to a large population of patients living with addiction— a chronic, often relapsing-remitting disease, but a treatable one.
Course Features
- Self-paced
- 6 online modules (90-120 min each)
- Interactive videos, cases, and online discussion forum
- Quizzes to assess knowledge and learning
Module 1: How do I show compassion to those with Substance Use Disorders (SUDs)?
Topics: Care, Compassion, and using Language
Module 1 Goals:
- Define substance use disorders as a diagnosable, chronic, and treatable medical condition
- Practice showing compassion by avoiding stigmatizing language and using patient-centered language and communication strategies instead
- Recognize the role of ambivalence and how motivational interviewing techniques can move patients in the direction of change
Module 2: “How do I know if my patient has a substance use disorder?”
Topics: Screening, Prevention, and Diagnosis
Module 2 Goals:
- List various risk factors for developing substance use disorders
- Combine screening techniques and knowledge of NIAAA drinking limits to determine risk and prevent future risks
- Employ SBIRT model and practice brief negotiations with those at increased risk
- Be able to diagnose a substance use disorder using DSM5 criteria
Module 3: How do I recommend treatment options?
Topics: assessment, goals, and referral to treatment
Module 3 Goals:
- Utilize the RIPTEAR framework to take a thorough assessment
- Accept wide range of treatment goals and adjust to various stages of change with corresponding motivational interviewing tactics
- Familiarize yourself with 5 broad treatment settings
- Gain confidence in recommending treatment settings matched to a patient’s needs and goals
- Recognize the interprofessional nature of addiction treatment and identify the roles of various providers
- Find treatment services in your local area to help connect people to substance use treatments
Module 4: “What medications help patients manage their substance use disorders?”
Topics: Neurobiology, medications, and monitoring treatment
Module 4 Goals:
- Understand how addiction alters the reward pathway
- Gain basic knowledge of how agonist, partial agonist, and antagonist medications work
- List medications approved to treat opioid use disorder and understand some of the provider restrictions
- List medications approved to treat alcohol use disorder
- List medication approved to treat smoking cessation
- Use clinical judgement to weigh risks and benefits associated with e-cigarette use
- Find treatment services in your local area to help connect people to substance use treatments
Module 5: “What psychosocial and behavioral therapies are available?”
Topics: Therapies, self-Help approaches, and fostering recovery
Module 5 Goals:
- Understand how parts of the brain can be rewired for recovery through positive lifestyle changes
- Recognize what psychiatric comorbidity is, how common it is, how it impacts prognosis, and how it impacts treatment plans
- Find treatment services in your local area to help connect people to substance use treatments
Module 6: “What other societal factors impact my patients odds of successful recovery?”
Topics: History, Policies, and addressing structural determinants of health
Module 6 Goals:
- Classify structural determinants of health and how they impact access to care
- Describe some historical reasons why addiction treatment has largely being sidelined by US medical system and why and how that is changing today
- Evaluate treatment programs using five signs of quality care
- Give examples of new policies that have positively impacted access to treatment
- Assess treatment services in your local area to evaluate their quality