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Determining the Best Time to Integrate Opioid Use Disorder Training into the Curriculum Based on Student Perceptions
Sheena D Brown1,2, Tia M Solh1,2
1Sheena D. Brown, PhD, MSCR , is an associate professor and director of curriculum innovation and evaluation in the Office of Physician Assistant Studies, Department of Family Medicine, at Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia.
Purpose:
The clinical phase of physician assistant (PA) education has been reported to be the best time period to deliver opioid prescribing education (OPE) and opioid addiction education (OAE); however, there are no current published studies that evaluate the timing of OPE and OAE instruction in PA curricula.
Methods:
This pilot study compared didactic and clinical phase cohorts' perceived confidence in their ability to evaluate patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) after receiving identical training at different time points within the curriculum.
Results:
As expected, clinical phase students displayed high confidence levels in their abilities both before and after implementation of OUD-focused patient simulations. Interestingly, didactic phase students' confidence levels were comparable to clinical phase students' confidence levels after participating in the patient simulations.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that students can benefit from this training in both phases of the curriculum, which may encourage and help PA programs to insert this important and timely information into their curriculum.
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