Effects of Implementing an Interactive Substance Use Disorders Workshop on a Family Medicine Clerkship

Substance use disorders (SUD) remain a public health crisis and training has been insufficient to provide the skills necessary to combat this crisis. We aimed to create and study an interactive, destigmatizing, skills-based workshop for medical students to evaluate if this changes students' self-reported knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward patients with SUD.

We surveyed students on a required family medicine outpatient rotation at a Pacific Northwest medical school during clerkship orientation on their views regarding SUDs utilizing the validated Drug and Drug Problems Perceptions Questionnaire containing a 7-point Likert scale. After attending a substance use disorder workshop, they repeated the survey. We calculated differences between the paired pre- to postsurveys.

We collected the pre- and postdata for 118 students who attended the workshop and showed statistically significant positive differences on all items.

The positive change in the medical students' reported attitudes suggests both necessity and feasibility in teaching SUD skills in a destigmatizing way in medical training. Positive changes also suggest a role of exposing students to family medicine and/or primary care as a strategy to learn competent care for patients with substance use disorders.