Experiences and opinions of health professional students participating in an opioid use disorder educational event

The objectives of this study were to describe health professional students' experiences and opinions about patients with opioid-use disorder (OUD), to summarize evaluation results from an OUD educational event and to compare results by sex, discipline, and clinical experience.

The OUD educational event lasted 75 minutes and covered the epidemiology of the opioid epidemic, evidence-based prevention and treatment services, stigma, and recommendations on how to improve care. An anonymous pre-event survey collected information on attendees' experiences and opinions about patients with OUD. The postevent survey collected information on the attendees' evaluation of the event.

Forty percent of students reported having a friend or family member who has/had an OUD. A minority (29.1%) reported that they would be uncomfortable working with patients with OUD or would prefer not to interact with patients with OUD (27.7%). Overall, the event evaluation results were very positive, and 85.5% reported that the information would change or influence their clinical practices. The open-ended responses found that the content was informative (n = 36); the attendees liked the inclusion of statistics (n = 19) and that the content was locally focused (n = 13).

Health professional students participating in this event had fewer negative opinions of patients with OUD than previous research has found, and this may, in part, be explained by their personal experiences. Overall, health professional students want to learn more about patients with OUD.